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Jeivar
2009-02-08, 02:06 PM
I've seen some mentions of this game on tvtropes, and have gotten curious. Could I get some opinions on it? Like, what's it like to play, are there any annoying flaws, is it difficult to learn . . . and, well, basically anything I would need to know before deciding whether to buy it or not. :smallsmile:

Innis Cabal
2009-02-08, 02:08 PM
I love the system, but I find the Second Edition to be....less then the first. I think its pretty easy to learn after just a little bit of reading, no where near as hard as D&D.

Its very player intensive. Alot of description, alot of lore and alot of fluff. Over all, one of the best RPG's out there.

Grey Paladin
2009-02-08, 03:44 PM
Horrific system, amazing fluff and setting.

I'd convert it and some concepts to your favorite system.

wadledo
2009-02-08, 03:56 PM
The system is very fun, and the setting is gorgeous.
My only complaint with it is that it's a little difficult to understand if you've played nothing but DnD, but once you get over that first bump, it's a great way to play.

toddex
2009-02-08, 04:08 PM
White wolf systems usually need more rules for me to find them enjoyable.

FatR
2009-02-08, 05:29 PM
The system is buggy, broken, doesn't fit the expected style of play in the slightest (in short, mechanics encourage you to play cautiously, be paranoid and conserve energy, also, combat tend to be either one-sided execution or a pure number contest, with outcome being predetermined by combatants' builds) and overall bad. The setting was good. Emphasis on "was". It started degenerating in the middle of the first edition run and only got worse from there. Currently, it is like FR, except Elminster actively works to kill you.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-08, 06:34 PM
My experiences with Exalted are opposite to FatR's - the system fits the game really well, and second edition fixed the "you gotta be careful all the time or you're going down" problem by giving everyone passive defense, which means you usually don't have to use defensive charms when fighting mooks - and combat versus high-powered Essence-users is supposed to be about out-tricking the opponent rather than flexing your Essence muscles. I like the setting of second edition more than first as well - Lunars make more sense, and the world is less grimdark and more steampunky. My only gripes with the game are really bad layout of most books and the mechanics tending to be slow at times - Exalted works better a PbP than a live game. Apart from those, I heartily recommend Exalted - second edition more than first.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-08, 06:48 PM
It plays very different from the hack and slash of 3.5, and I agree with much of the above, though I find 2nd ed. much like I find all nWoD, just hitting on the basics and ignoring alot of the cool fluff.

FatR
2009-02-08, 06:52 PM
Problem is "outtricking" an opponent has no place in Exalted 2E combat. Either an opponent doesn't have a way to perfectly defend against everything, in which case you reduce him to atoms with your Celestial Instadeath Combo, or he does, in which case the combat becomes the above-mentioned number contest. The combatant who can impose a favorable Essence attrition rate on his opponent wins. This, however, takes alot of time, because against an opponent with a complete defensive packgage you must resort to your normal attacks, so that he won't counter your expensive multi-attack combo by his much cheaper leaping dodge combo. Think of it as of beating an opponent with 50+ HP when the damage of your attacks is fixed at 3 HP and you attack about twice per round.

Oh, and there are about two and a half good builds for each splat. And it is very easy to gimp your character by accident.

Talya
2009-02-08, 07:00 PM
I love the setting.

The system seems to let one play the setting very well. It fits with the flavor of the game.

danelsan
2009-02-08, 07:07 PM
I find it to be my prefered RPG. I've favored D&D for more than a decade, but was growing unsatisfied with it in 3.Xe and 4e felt really "souless" to me.

Exalted has allowed me to see my Epic dreams come true, due to it's scope being much grander than most games out there.

I used to have a problem with the little variation present in WWs games in terms of putting the entirety of human competence in a frame of 1 to 5, but now I see how it works well for the cinematic feel desired.

I consider the setting to be a true masterpiece and that the system, even with some flaws, go very well with it. In particular, setting and mechanics are very well tied together and usually the rules make sense in the setting.

I also love that mystical competence is, in most circumstances, derived from normal comptence. That is, you must be stealthy before having a magic ability to become invisible. Thus no "wizard makes the rogue obsolete at high levels" that has a happened quite a number of times in my D&D games

Even low level magic items tend to be much better than a mundane equivalent (no "+1 armor") and higher level items can be incredibly powerful, yet without overshadowing the character using them

My experience with it has been marvelous, and the combats (normal or social) have been amazing. As a personal preference, the fact that resurrection is one of the few things trully impossible in this game is a plus for me

I think I can't praise it enough. I love it.

That said, while I find Exalted 2e to be awesome, be aware that a few books, particularly the Manual of Exalted Power: Sidereals, suffer a really bad case of copy-paste by some author that had no idea of the mechanical differences between editions.

This is specially important because a lot of charms (the most common superpower in the game) ended up being very badly adapted to the new edition, sometimes even mentioning rules that work differently now.

Quite a few of the best writers that worked in the books frequent the official forums, so they are very accessible to explain something they wrote. That forum can be a bit rough as there are a few people who are not nice and moderation is not very active, but the discussion tend to be informative and most of the time entertaining.

Taking everything into account, I think it is the best of the HUGE number of RPGs I've played and I advise anybody who is not disgusted by reading some of the fluff to try this game.

FatR
2009-02-08, 07:09 PM
That said, the core idea of the game is solid. However, I found that it is much easier to run Exalted-style games using DnD 3.5 rules. Restrictive tactical combat movement is a small price to pay for a system that is actually interesting. (Social interaction mechanics blow in both systems, except in Exalted they seem well thought-out at first.)

Tengu_temp
2009-02-08, 07:20 PM
I'd say DND's system, between overpowered casters, non-ToB melee classes having stupidly limited choices in combat, over-dependence on magic items and general lack of balance (Exalted isn't 100% balanced either, but much closer to balance than DND 3.5), does not fit the epic feel of Exalted at all.

Grey Paladin
2009-02-08, 07:49 PM
My main problem with the system was that no one ever activated Charms in Exalted combat due to the fact that if you didn't have a Perfect Defense ready, you were as good as dead.

Or if a Sorcerer got the right spell off.

Or if you were ambushed.

Or if your Perfect Defense couldn't block that attack.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-08, 07:57 PM
That's what combos are for.

Talya
2009-02-08, 08:02 PM
That's what combos are for.

Combos are expensive, both in terms of experience used to create, and essence and willpower to use.

That said, yes. That is what combos are for. I'd say this is a minor issue for me.

Artanis
2009-02-08, 08:04 PM
My main problem with the system was that no one ever activated Charms in Exalted combat due to the fact that if you didn't have a Perfect Defense ready, you were as good as dead.

Or if a Sorcerer got the right spell off.

Or if you were ambushed.

Or if your Perfect Defense couldn't block that attack.
That's what combos are for.


Edit: Crap, took me a day and a half to notice that Tengu had ninja'd me, with the exact same words :smallredface:

GryffonDurime
2009-02-08, 08:07 PM
I'm definately pro-Exalted. Probably my favorite distinction between DnD and Exalted, in terms of combat at least, comes from this example:

In DnD, if I want to grab a nearby tower shield, surf it down the mountain side, and jump off with sword raised up as I slam into the bad guy, the DM will likely stare blankly at me for a moment, call for a Tumble/Balance check of an arbitrary DC, and then have me make an attack as normal...assuming I didn't fall on my face.

In Exalted, if I did that, the Storyteller would nod, call for my attack roll, and give me two to three stunt dice to add to my attack. I'd get to regain some motes of Essence or Willpower for my troubles.

DnD is very proscribed in format. It encourages you to think strategically, in that where you're placed is tremendously important. Exalted encourages you to think creatively, using the scenery the Storyteller has provided to your advantage.

Grey Paladin
2009-02-08, 08:14 PM
Spamming a combo with a perfect defense inside will quickly run you out of Will - and the moment you're out of will, you're dead (as you usually only recover Will every other round).

Not to mention many Spells are not considered attacks, and thus cannot be Perfect'd.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-08, 09:07 PM
Is this the system with the dinosaurs that pee heroin?:smallconfused:

GryffonDurime
2009-02-08, 09:09 PM
Not to mention many Spells are not considered attacks, and thus cannot be Perfect'd.

Show me the Sorcerer who managed to turn Sorcery into an effective weapon mid-combat, and I'll show you a Sorcerer who put in enough work/took a big enough risk to deserve their win.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-08, 09:09 PM
Not that I remember :smalleek:

GryffonDurime
2009-02-08, 09:10 PM
Is this the system with the dinosaurs that pee heroin?:smallconfused:

Yes. It is.

(Beasts of Resplendant Liquid)

Tengu_temp
2009-02-08, 09:11 PM
They make sense in the context. And are a much smaller part of the setting than people who only know about Exalted from TV Tropes think.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-08, 09:13 PM
Which is how I found out about Exalted.:smallredface:

Morandir Nailo
2009-02-08, 10:07 PM
I like Exalted a lot; we've been playing every other week for the last two years (same campaign) and we've had a blast. The setting is fantastic, and while the system is crunchy, it's easy to learn the basics. As for combat, I'll say this: I've never used a Perfect. Not once. In fact, I only recently picked one up, because I figured that at some point in the future I might need it, and charms are cheap for a Solar.

We tend to play fast and loose with rule systems in my group so I've never experience the "celestial instadeath combo vs. perfect" mote attrition war that others talk about. It really just depends on your ST, and what sort of game the group wants to play. If you're willing to keep the rules in the background, you'll have a great time. If you spend too much time thinking about them, it can be easy to find stuff that doesn't work as well as it should. But all in all it's a fantastic game.

Mor

danelsan
2009-02-08, 11:08 PM
I'll put the discussion in spoiler blocks, since they probably don't make much sense to the OP and Walls-of-Text can discourage reading the most important parts - counsel about buying the books or not. Here we go

As for "mote war", not really true. At Celestial level combat involving perfect defenses, other strategies enter the field: reestablishing surprise, environmental damage, and never forget Flaws of invulnerability. Wanna beat someone who can parry a mountain, but only when protecting someone or something? I guess you should attack such person when they are alone on the road, or start a fight and make him follow you to such a location. Temperance flaw? he can't move! Ranged attacks will destroy the foe. And so on...

Exhausting the opponent's Essence or Willpower is a valid tactical choice, specially when Combos including surprise negation and Celestial level perfect defenses enter play (which can be very easy for Solars), but not the only one, nor necessarily the best for all cases.

In the beginning, it can occur like that. If the players are good stunters, it can still be entertaining. But things got a lot more interesting once I had the antagonists fighting smart. My players soon catched up, and now every major combat is truly earth-shakingly epic.

I guess discussing game mechanics here won't be so helpful for the OP. So I'll just say that perfect defenses have not ruined any of my games and battles have not become all a tedious race toward "I'm out of essence".

I'm not saying the system is perfect. For one, it can be slow. The first game I had a fight that took 3 hours to go through because we were still getting the system. But it works well for the setting and once you get used to it the speed increases. We now can do a battle like that one in about half an hour, maybe 20 minutes if we hurry.

On the other hand, I've seen some people hating the system (I'd say it was most of the time because they don't took the time to learn it properly, and in one case was because the individual never liked anything other than D&D - no, not even other D20 games), so perhaps:


-borrow the corebook if you can, or better yet, see if you can get to play, or at least watch, a game with people experienced in the system, before deciding if you buy the books or not.

-Or go to the WW Exalted Forums and see if you can get in some "PbP game for newbies", see if anybody would be willing to make you a character and ST (White Wolf's for DM) a simple game to explain you the system in the process.

-Also, take a look at White Wolf's offcial Exalted Wiki and look for an article called Exalted 201. It is a good example combat explaining all most of the combat system. It also link to other 20x articles that explain other things, but I find the 201 to be most well made.

-I think a good choice would be getting "Return to the Tomb of Five Corners":if I'm not mistaken, it is a ready adventure, with ready characters, and a very, very resumed system. it is not a very EPIC adventure, but maybe it will give you a taste of Exalted for less money and allow you to decide if you want the book. But it can still be awkward if you are not used to White Wolf's games, specially if you only played D20, since they are very different.

-Google "Keychain of Creation". It is a stick-comic based in Exalted, and it can be very funny.

Finally, at least I'm pretty sure you'll love the Stunt mechanic. Everybody I know who knows it love Stunts, even if they hate the rest!

Well, I went much longer than I expected...hopefully it will at least help a little :smallwink:

Jerthanis
2009-02-09, 01:48 AM
Spamming a combo with a perfect defense inside will quickly run you out of Will - and the moment you're out of will, you're dead (as you usually only recover Will every other round).

Not to mention many Spells are not considered attacks, and thus cannot be Perfect'd.

I'm reasonably sure non-attacks are still defendable with perfect defenses. You can Perfect-Soak falling from great height, you can perfect-dodge a cave-in or crushing-wall trap, and you can even perfect parry standing in a bonfire, as silly as that sounds.

That's why the charms say, "Even if it is undodgeable/unblockable" at the end. An effect would have to specifically say, "Perfect defenses do not work against this effect" in plain writing to overcome a perfect defense.

And as to your other point: 2 die stunts can give you back a point of willpower... so if two Celestial Exalts of exactly the same power walk up to each other and start duking it out, the one who does the more impressive stunts wins. That's why Exalted's system fits its flavor so well (in my opinion), you win by being more awesome than your foe moreso than by having a better build.

I love Exalted, it's the setting with the most hanging plot points for the characters to pick up and weave into reigns to drive the setting in the direction of their own ambitions... and the most stylish and morally ambiguous cast of antagonists ready to get in their way. The system is at least functional, and fits the flavor well, but I could definitely see people preferring to run the setting in another system.

Grey Paladin
2009-02-09, 03:12 AM
In the (at least 1E) Errata, it clarified the 'block anything' part - they decided that only Heavenly Guardian Defense can block stuff that otherwise cannot be blocked - as long as they're physical.

Yes, that means Cascade of Cutting Terror is a 5 mote instant-win against anyone lacking Heavenly Guardian Defense (and in case of Stealth, Surprise Anticipation Method in a combo with it).

Its rarely that the supercombos bother me - they at least have a cost in Will (the character's lifeblood in Exalted combat) - but cheap stuff like Cascade of Cutting Terror, Blossom of Inevitable Demise Technique, and Fire and Stones Strike have a minor cost for a (often) perfect/save-or-die effect.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-09, 03:13 AM
There is sadly not a whole lot of support for either 1st ed or 2nd ed on these forums. Been trying to get a Dragon Blood game started for a while, but it quickly falls to the 3rd or 4th page in a day or two.

FatR
2009-02-09, 03:30 AM
I'd say DND's system, between overpowered casters, non-ToB melee classes having stupidly limited choices in combat, over-dependence on magic items and general lack of balance (Exalted isn't 100% balanced either, but much closer to balance than DND 3.5), does not fit the epic feel of Exalted at all.
Balance does not exist in Exalted, period. For example, you must take one exact defensive Charm kit for every character of a particular splat or fail at life (literally, if the Storyteller throws actually challenging things at you). For another example, minion-obtaining spells break the game. Also, see my description of Exalted combat above. Non-ToB melees in DnD actually have more choices. In Exalted, once you create something mechanically effective, your illusory variety of combat choices collapses into "I push Instantwin button" and "I make two normal attacks... again" whenever you fight something that is actually challenging.

Also, Exalted characters are disturbingly weak and incapable, for a superheroic game, unless you exploit the system to create One True Build, as I outlined before. I pretty much gave up on the system, when I realized that there is no way to create a character that fights with energy beams or knives and does not suck horribly.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-09, 03:34 AM
Its been my experiance you don't play Exalted for the combat. Its a cinamatic game...you don't have to use Instawin Charm Combos.

As for summoning magic game breaking...when? When you can spend nothing and have an Ally background or if your playing Dragon Blood, Henchmen/Command. And its more or less free. Where as summoning magic ranges from 10 motes of Essence to so much that if you invested your character's growth into Sorcery there are players who can easily beat what ever you summon

FatR
2009-02-09, 03:46 AM
Its been my experiance you don't play Exalted for the combat. Its a cinamatic game...you don't have to use Instawin Charm Combos.
What you mean by "cinematic", if characters are not supposed to fight in Exalted? Why 2/3 Charms and rules in the game are devoted to combat, if he is supposedly boils down to Storyteller declaring the winner?


As for summoning magic game breaking...when? When you can spend nothing and have an Ally background or if your playing Dragon Blood, Henchmen/Command. And its more or less free. Where as summoning magic ranges from 10 motes of Essence to so much that if you invested your character's growth into Sorcery there are players who can easily beat what ever you summon
Allies are allies and they cost background points. Summoned ****, spawned monsters and amalgams are perfectly obedient slaves and usually cost you nothing that you cannot easily replenish. You need to spend, like, 3 Charms to access things that can obliterate any starting character without a full defense kit of One True Build and give even such character a run for his money. True breakage, of course, begins once you get some EXP under your belt and start mass-producing things that are almost as strong as yourself. Even if you don't go as far as you mechanically can, minion-obtaining forever removes the need to bother with training mortals or creating warmachines, invalidating dozens and dozens of Charms with 1-2 spells.

FatR
2009-02-09, 03:49 AM
That's what combos are for.
With combos, you still do not activate any Charms, but perfect defenses, ever, unless you're sure that the enemy has no ability to use a perfect defense and you can annihilate him with your megadeath combo.

As about things that can supposedly, can help you to avoid mote attrition in 2E:

1)Perfect anti-surprise Charm must be a part of your standard defensive Combo. Or you die. That's also why you die the moment you fail to activate a Combo. Also, if enemies do not use surprise attacks and do not force Combo activation on every action, the combat can well stalemate for hundreds of ticks (see about stunts, below).
2)There are no "Flaws" of Invulnerability. There is but one Flaw, that of Conviction and taking any other means deliberately gimping yourself, because unlike them the Conviction flaw is extremely unlikely to ever come up. Also, if your Flaw activates, you die.
3)Stunts. Everyone does 2-die stunts all the time, this is, like, as mandatory to surviving combat as swinging your weapon. This is also very easy. 3-die stunts, on the other hand, are almost impossible. So, stunt quality makes no difference, unless the Storyteller goes easy on players and gives NPCs reduced stunt awards.

As about games, where characters do not have proper defensive Combos (because they are, I don't know, Dragonblooded or want to do something else besides fighting): if you play with mild concept optimization, one side tears another to pieces within 10 ticks in 2E. If you play with any sort of optimization for power, battles are decided by initiative rolls. Even if enemies don't have megadeath combos, your probability of surviving multiattack Charms of Exalted and gods, coupled with decent weapons, is low.

FatR
2009-02-09, 03:52 AM
Spamming a combo with a perfect defense inside will quickly run you out of Will - and the moment you're out of will, you're dead (as you usually only recover Will every other round).

Not to mention many Spells are not considered attacks, and thus cannot be Perfect'd.
You were misinformed. Everything harmful is considered an attack. So your answer to everything, no matter how powerful or insidious is "LOL, SSE".

Innis Cabal
2009-02-09, 03:58 AM
Where as it only takes you a 5 in ally (3 of your background points and 4 bonus points to raise it to 5) to give you your own circle, sworn brotherhood etc. They arn't just starting characters. These guys are of "Immense" power.

Not sure how you have lost or even had problems with a "weak" build, heck i've never once "built" a character in Exalted and have been playing 1st end since it came out, one character living through the entire game with only two combat specific charms, and that game lasted almost 2 years.



In DnD, if I want to grab a nearby tower shield, surf it down the mountain side, and jump off with sword raised up as I slam into the bad guy, the DM will likely stare blankly at me for a moment, call for a Tumble/Balance check of an arbitrary DC, and then have me make an attack as normal...assuming I didn't fall on my face.

In Exalted, if I did that, the Storyteller would nod, call for my attack roll, and give me two to three stunt dice to add to my attack. I'd get to regain some motes of Essence or Willpower for my troubles.

DnD is very proscribed in format. It encourages you to think strategically, in that where you're placed is tremendously important. Exalted encourages you to think creatively, using the scenery the Storyteller has provided to your advantage.

I agree with this fully really. D&D is pretty weak when it comes to creativity, and would hinder any game thats not D&D. Not that I dislike that game

Heck, there are some Exalt's that don't even HAVE perfect defense's, and they are really fun to play.

The world itself is really what makes it such a great game, the fluff is astounding and wonderful, even the worst of the published books being an interesting enough read to hold ones attention for more then 20 minutes. Is it perfect? Not at all, but in my 20 years of gaming I have yet to find one that -IS-. Does 1st ed/2nd ed Exalted come close? Not at all, but no one here has said it has.

Alot of rules are about combat sure, I mean, its the one thing you do need rules for. Why are ther no rules for social interaction? Because thats a silly idea and has no place in a game like Exalted, where its left up to actual RP. And even then there are more then a large number of Charms that help with social interaction dice pools.

I just can't fathom your issues with the system, I have never once encountered them, even when playing the stronger Exalts.

The only thing I find goofy about the whole system is the Sidereal Martial Arts. I mean...Charcol March of Spiders....really? And thats one of the less insane ones.

Grey Paladin
2009-02-09, 03:59 AM
Errata specifically gives an example of SSE being unable to block Cascade of Cutting Terror because, while it can Dodge anything that can be Dodged, Cascade of Cutting Terror cannot be Dodged (notice the wording on Cascade - it says only 'cannot be dodged', not 'cannot be perfect-dodged').

Following this logic, anything that you cannot roll to Dodge cannot be SSE'd (HGD was specifically mentioned as being an exception to this rule - and thus costing Will).

Also, please edit your post instead of posting if you are the last poster in the thread.

FatR
2009-02-09, 04:10 AM
Where as it only takes you a 5 in ally (3 of your background points and 4 bonus points to raise it to 5) to give you your own circle, sworn brotherhood etc. They arn't just starting characters. These guys are of "Immense" power.
Wrong. Reread the description. They are starting characters, if there is more than one. You also can't order them around.


Not sure how you have lost or even had problems with a "weak" build, heck i've never once "built" a character in Exalted and have been playing 1st end since it came out, one character living through the entire game with only two combat specific charms, and that game lasted almost 2 years.
That's because your storyteller pampered you, never sending even remotely comparable threats.


Heck, there are some Exalt's that don't even HAVE perfect defense's, and they are really fun to play.
And they die without offering any resistance to anything, build on third their XP, but with efficiency in mind.


Alot of rules are about combat sure, I mean, its the one thing you do need rules for. Why are ther no rules for social interaction? Because thats a silly idea and has no place in a game like Exalted, where its left up to actual RP. And even then there are more then a large number of Charms that help with social interaction dice pools.
There are lots of rules for social interactions in Exalted, particularly in 2E. Except they blow and in the end the result of every social attempt that is not a direct mind rape depends on whether a Storyteller kindly allows it to work.


The only thing I find goofy about the whole system is the Sidereal Martial Arts. I mean...Charcol March of Spiders....really? And thats one of the less insane ones.
Goofy? I can use another word for them. Because with them started turning the Big Bads into utterly invincible deathmachines that play Dragonball Z, while the rest of the world plays, like, Dynasty Warriors.

FatR
2009-02-09, 04:16 AM
Errata specifically gives an example of SSE being unable to block Cascade of Cutting Terror because, while it can Dodge anything that can be Dodged, Cascade of Cutting Terror cannot be Dodged (notice the wording on Cascade - it says only 'cannot be dodged', not 'cannot be perfect-dodged').

Following this logic, anything that you cannot roll to Dodge cannot be SSE'd (HGD was specifically mentioned as being an exception to this rule - and thus costing Will).

Also, please edit your post instead of posting if you are the last poster in the thread.
Ah, you're talking about 1E. In 2E perfects auto-negate anything and everything. Not that 1E is much better - there your multilayer persistent effects make you almost invincible to anything that is not a perfect attack, and then you can back them up with HGD. Admittedly, you're less fragile in 1E, so Charm defenses aren't as overwhelmingly important, and stacked persistents are almost impossible for a starting character, so this problem doesn't come up immediately.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-09, 04:17 AM
Actually, reading the rules on page 142 of the 1st ed core handbook it says that a dot of 1 nets you a standard starting character. 5 gets you 5 of starting or several (between 2 to 4) of Immense Power. 5 is all you need for a circle, you and 4 make 5.

So what if you can't order them around? As for our ST not sending actual threats...i'll disagree with you, arguing about it isn't really going to get us anywhere.

Also note, I don't use 2nd ed, as most White Wolf products produced now adays are simply not up to snuff in my honest opinion. I'm looking at you nWoD. Glad they are keeping the setting alive, but I have all the 1st ed books, and much like 3.5 to 4th, I don't have to change if I have the material that lets me play what I want.

Clearly Exalted wasn't and isn't the setting for you. And thats fine, to each their own. But there are different play styles then your own. I'm glad you've figured a way out to play the game in your own way to make it fun, thats what its all about.

Grey Paladin
2009-02-09, 04:28 AM
Many effects do not allow you to either Dodge or Parry, so no Layered defenses (who, by the way, take two rounds to set up if you want to make them both persistent to be ready to Perfect serious attacks- one of which takes the whole turn).

And in the case of certain spells with a half-kilometer range or a stealth attack, if you are ever Surprised you're dead.

FatR
2009-02-09, 04:30 AM
Actually, reading the rules on page 142 of the 1st ed core handbook it says that a dot of 1 nets you a standard starting character. 5 gets you 5 of starting or several (between 2 to 4) of Immense Power. 5 is all you need for a circle, you and 4 make 5.

1E core pp. 141-142:
"Allies are people in their own right, with lives as complex
and involving as your character's. Friendship is a two-way
street, and if your character takes but doesn't give, her allies
are likely to desert her. Allies do what they can to help your
character, but they don't throw their lives away for nothing,
nor are they on call to succor you in every situation. Like
anyone, they grow weary of repeated demands on their time
and resources. And, of course, allies can also call for assistance.
Each dot typically represents one ally. Instead of
signifying multiple allies, however, a high rating could
represent a more powerful ally."
"One ally of moderate ability (equivalent
to a starting character).
¥¥ Two allies or one significant one.
¥¥¥ Three allies or fewer allies of correspondingly
high power.
¥¥¥¥ Four allies or fewer ones of great capability.
¥¥¥¥¥ Five allies or fewer ones of immense power."

2E core pp 110-111:
" Also, allies are independent people with
their own lives and goals. If your character asks for aid but does
not provide any in return, her allies will soon desert her. Allies
do what they can to help your character, but they won’t risk their lives for any but the most important causes—possibly, not even then. Allies asking for help can make for fun roleplaying.
Trait Effects: Each dot in this Background typically represents
one ally approximately equal in power to a starting character.
More powerful allies require higher ratings. Depending upon
both her score in this Background and the power of the allies,
your character can have between one and five allies."
I.e.: paying dots for the Allies background is setting your dots on fire for no tangible mechanical benefit in 2E. In 1E this background is somewhat better, though you still depend on the Storyteller's mercy.


Clearly Exalted wasn't and isn't the setting for you. And thats fine, to each their own. But there are different play styles then your own. I'm glad you've figured a way out to play the game in your own way to make it fun, thats what its all about.
Exalted was a setting for me before 2E. Except the game's mechanics don't really support the setting or the theme.


Many effects do not allow you to either Dodge or Parry, so no Layered defenses (who, by the way, take two rounds to set up if you want to make them both persistent to be ready to Perfect serious attacks- one of which takes the whole turn).

And in the case of certain spells with a half-kilometer range or a stealth attack, if you are ever Surprised you're dead.
Then you HGD said effects or, you know, add success subtracters or whatever to your persistent turtle shell. And auto-winning by getting drop on your enemy is not much better than being unable to hurt each other. Admittedly, this is still better than 2E mote attrition wars.

Iethloc
2009-02-09, 04:43 AM
It's not like it's hard to maintain an ally. You just have to be their friend, and do a favor for them once in a while. They're great quest material.

And yes, perfect defenses in 2E defend against nearly everything. But if you spam it against everything like you've been constantly suggesting, you will run out of motes very quickly, basically surrendering in the attrition wars you've also mentioned.

In fact, there's an easy way around attrition, too. There are charms that allow you to regain motes mid-combat along with stunts, making combat more of a matter of creativity and ingenuity to see who can slip past the adamant defense of the other person first (flaws of invulnerability, anyone?). It can take a while, but it would be epic from start to finish, like Exalted should be.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-09, 04:49 AM
I pretty much gave up on the system, when I realized that there is no way to create a character that fights with energy beams or knives and does not suck horribly.

Gah? Knives are only slightly worse than swords in melee, and a great weapon for throwing. Exalted is not a game of all or nothing, just because a choice is suboptimal does not mean it will suck horribly - it will just perform a bit worse, but good tactics beat squeezing the system for every additional die available.

horseboy
2009-02-09, 05:04 AM
Yes. It is.

(Beasts of Resplendant Liquid)Please tell me it's a Naked Lunch reference.
Personally:
Not a fan of Capes.
Not a fan of WW's excessive Pretentiousness.
Not a fan of "Graduating My Game". Really that Diploma was just too much.
But hey, if you like capes and can look past the "holier-than-thouness" knock yourself out.

Oslecamo
2009-02-09, 05:05 AM
I agree with this fully really. D&D is pretty weak when it comes to creativity, and would hinder any game thats not D&D. Not that I dislike that game


I'm sorry, but I must bug in to say this a complete myth.

D&D rewards creativity. You just have to be creative enough. Remember, the DM is always allowed to give circumstance bonuses if he thinks the player deserves them.

1-Illusions, nuff said. Silent image and it's older brothers can be all quite usefull, as long as you have enough imagination.

2-Bluff, diplomacy, charms and friends. You get bonuses for good roleplaying when using those.

3-Use the rules, instead of waiting for the rules to use you. For example, just puting yourself over the tower shield won't grant any bonus...But go search for the rules of falling damage, make a nice speech to the DM, and you'll be able to crush your enemy as you fall over them with your shield.

If anything, I'll say D&D rewards more creativity than exalted, since in D&D your creativity may lead you to an army of cyborg dinossaurs, where in exalted you get what, a bunch of extra dies on that roll and some resource recovery?

Tengu_temp
2009-02-09, 05:13 AM
Please tell me it's a Naked Lunch reference.
Personally:
Not a fan of Capes.
Not a fan of WW's excessive Pretentiousness.
Not a fan of "Graduating My Game". Really that Diploma was just too much.
But hey, if you like capes and can look past the "holier-than-thouness" knock yourself out.

Um, you do realize that Exalted is not a superhero game, right? And while it's true that WW is an extremely pretentious bunch, it can't be denied that they release good products.


I'm sorry, but I must bug in to say this a complete myth.

D&D rewards creativity. You just have to be creative enough. Remember, the DM is always allowed to give circumstance bonuses if he thinks the player deserves them.

1-Illusions, nuff said. Silent image and it's older brothers can be all quite usefull, as long as you have enough imagination.

2-Bluff, diplomacy, charms and friends. You get bonuses for good roleplaying when using those.

3-Use the rules, instead of waiting for the rules to use you. For example, just puting yourself over the tower shield won't grant any bonus...But go search for the rules of falling damage, make a nice speech to the DM, and you'll be able to crush your enemy as you fall over them with your shield.

If anything, I'll say D&D rewards more creativity than exalted, since in D&D your creativity may lead you to an army of cyborg dinossaurs, where in exalted you get what, a bunch of extra dies on that roll and some resource recovery?

Because, of course, you can do all these things only in DND, not in Exalted or any other game.

horseboy
2009-02-09, 05:32 AM
Um, you do realize that Exalted is not a superhero game, right? It's not a modern era super hero game, correct.
And while it's true that WW is an extremely pretentious bunch, it can't be denied that they release good products.
Anything that's inspired that much Live Journal poetry can be argued to not be "good". :smallwink:
But no seriously, there were many times I had to just put a WW book down the excrement was so deep. If I can't stand to read it, I'm not going to consider it "good."

FatR
2009-02-09, 05:32 AM
It's not like it's hard to maintain an ally. You just have to be their friend, and do a favor for them once in a while. They're great quest material.

And yes, perfect defenses in 2E defend against nearly everything. But if you spam it against everything like you've been constantly suggesting, you will run out of motes very quickly, basically surrendering in the attrition wars you've also mentioned.

In fact, there's an easy way around attrition, too. There are charms that allow you to regain motes mid-combat along with stunts, making combat more of a matter of creativity and ingenuity to see who can slip past the adamant defense of the other person first (flaws of invulnerability, anyone?). It can take a while, but it would be epic from start to finish, like Exalted should be.
You must spam them against everything (except mooks), because everything (except mooks) kills you in 2-4 hits in 2E. Often this is true even if your armor reduces their damage to Essence ping. And characters who actually are optimized for good damage kill you in 1 hit. To regain motes in combat you usually need to damage enemy or take hits - the latter is often unacceptable (although if you're a Twilight Solar soakmonkey, you can indeed use this to become almost invincible), against the former there are perfects. And as I already said, getting past the Conviction flaw is nearly impossible, that's why everyone who wants to live takes it. Creativity and ingenuity have no place in Exalted 2E combat, because the answer to them is "LOL, SSE". (Unless you talk about stunts, which too usually become a chore, instead of outlet for creativity, after 3-4 actions, because you must stunt all the time to stay alive.) Finally, If you must do sidequests to defeat normal enemies, then the combat system just sucks.


Gah? Knives are only slightly worse than swords in melee, and a great weapon for throwing. Exalted is not a game of all or nothing, just because a choice is suboptimal does not mean it will suck horribly - it will just perform a bit worse, but good tactics beat squeezing the system for every additional die available.
Swords suck too, unless you're talking about grandklaives. Throwing in 2E is good only for executing people who left themselves open, otherwise you must burn Essence to be effective with it, which is unacceptable. There are no tactics in Exalted, except for dogpiling one enemy, to burn through his Essence reserses rapidly. Exalted 2E is quite close to a game of all or nothing at Solar level. Either you have a proper counter to enemy's attacks or see above about how fast you'll die.

Iethloc
2009-02-09, 05:51 AM
All you have to do to get past the Conviction flaw is take some advice from Palpatine. Be manipulative. Make them think what they're doing does not help their motivation. If they want to be the best Swordsman in the world, it'll be harder, but all you have to do is NOT FIGHT WITH A SWORD. Then they're not proving their swordsmanship at all, and are thus wasting their time, which is counterproductive.

And if you can't soak damage, then you're either up against a Lunar combat beast, or you have forsaken Ox Body Technique. Seriously, in all the Exalted games I've played, most hits do just 1-3 levels of damage when you've paid any attention to soak, and it's easy to negate wound penalties. Some enemies don't actually pump themselves up with Strength Increasing Exercise/Burn Life and wield Starmetal Grand Goremauls.

Also, Joy in Adversity Stance. Regain motes for defending against an attack that could have hurt you. And, if every attack can kill you, then you'll be rolling in motes. And it won't activate on a perfect defense, since using that against an attack means it can't hurt you.

And swords most certainly do not suck. They have the highest accuracy compared to say, hammers and axes, and still have a decent defense.

And once again, spamming perfect defenses costs far too much Essence to be viable. All it takes is one Extra Action charm to annihilate their Essence pool.


I also never said you had to go visit a friend just so you can kill a Dragon-Blood. You do that to gather forces to fight a well-established Solar and his armies, who certainly needs that many resources to fight anyway.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-09, 06:07 AM
Swords suck too, unless you're talking about grandklaives. Throwing in 2E is good only for executing people who left themselves open, otherwise you must burn Essence to be effective with it, which is unacceptable. There are no tactics in Exalted, except for dogpiling one enemy, to burn through his Essence reserses rapidly. Exalted 2E is quite close to a game of all or nothing at Solar level. Either you have a proper counter to enemy's attacks or see above about how fast you'll die.

Well yeah, throwing has a niche - sneaky and quick assassination. Being good at this is not the same as sucking. And if swords supposedly suck, then what weapons don't? And what indicated does a weapon suck or not?
As for the rest of your post, my experiences with Exalted are different - I've seen many essence-using enemies defeated before they burned all their essence, by exploiting their weaknesses.

Aquillion
2009-02-09, 08:13 AM
I'm reasonably sure non-attacks are still defendable with perfect defenses. You can Perfect-Soak falling from great height, you can perfect-dodge a cave-in or crushing-wall trap, and you can even perfect parry standing in a bonfire, as silly as that sounds.You can also specifically (as in, the artifact specifically says you can) Perfect-Soak the setting's equivalent of a nuclear weapon, in which case you are totally unaffected -- literally, everything in two miles (or however far it was, I forget) dies automatically, and you're standing there blinking without a hair out of place.


Currently, it is like FR, except Elminster actively works to kill you.Best description of Chejop Kejak ever. Although, to be fair, if you really want to do away with him all you have to do is wait two years until he dies of old age.


Where as summoning magic ranges from 10 motes of Essence to so much that if you invested your character's growth into Sorcery there are players who can easily beat what ever you summonYou will have to describe the builds that you think can easily beat a third-circle demon. :smalltongue:

(Yes, yes, I know, finding opponents willing to wait until the next Calibration so you can risk not only your own life but the introduction of a major threat to Creation simply to win one fight is not a very common scenario. But still.)

FatR
2009-02-09, 11:13 AM
All you have to do to get past the Conviction flaw is take some advice from Palpatine. Be manipulative. Make them think what they're doing does not help their motivation.
Join Battle perfectly counters social stuff, you know. And, it is completely impossible to convince anyone of anything unless the target feels like being convinced or you use a direct mindcontrol Charm which is a sufficient provocation to kick your ass even for nice guys and will not work before they start kicking your ass.


If they want to be the best Swordsman in the world, it'll be harder, but all you have to do is NOT FIGHT WITH A SWORD. Then they're not proving their swordsmanship at all, and are thus wasting their time, which is counterproductive.
This depends on them being idiots and not formulating their motivation as "best warrior", even if the Storytellers feels like telling you such minute details of their motivation.


And if you can't soak damage, then you're either up against a Lunar combat beast, or you have forsaken Ox Body Technique. Seriously, in all the Exalted games I've played, most hits do just 1-3 levels of damage when you've paid any attention to soak, and it's easy to negate wound penalties.
3 levels of damage is 40% of your health. Spirits that can match starting Solars do as much on average Essence ping, making armor near-worthless. Other Exalted don't do as much, except that they can easily crank their damage to levels that also invalidate armor (because, even before Charms, the best core armor cannot negate more than 2/3 damage from grandklaive, which is not the most damaging weapon, and Stamina adds to soak half of what Strength add to damage). As a result, say Dragonblooded characters (no early perfects, no good early offense) that are made for working within a concept, not for power, tear each other apart within 10 ticks, as I had enough opportunities to observe during my two-year 2E campaign. The only characters that can depend on soak at all are Twilights and Godzilla Lunars.
Also, Ox-Body Techique is among worst investments you can ever make, barring some Lunar builds. It is entirely useless against killer combos and makes you survive one more normal hit, at best.


Some enemies don't actually pump themselves up with Strength Increasing Exercise/Burn Life and wield Starmetal Grand Goremauls.
Some enemies are weak and gimped. Wizards in DnD too can suck if you deliberately outfit them with crap spells. Also, Goremauls aren't good against an enemy with a full defensive kit (because of their Rate).


Also, Joy in Adversity Stance. Regain motes for defending against an attack that could have hurt you. And, if every attack can kill you, then you'll be rolling in motes. And it won't activate on a perfect defense, since using that against an attack means it can't hurt you.
That's why it sucks, unless you outmatch your opponent significantly.


And swords most certainly do not suck. They have the highest accuracy compared to say, hammers and axes, and still have a decent defense.
Defense is pointless. You ignore mooks and perfect-spam against serious opponents anyway. Good weapons have Piercing tag, big damage and Rate greater than 1. Accuracy wont' hurt too, but 1-2 dice of difference don't mean much in the world of 13+ dice basic pools. So, instead of "swords" you can say "Grandklaive".


And once again, spamming perfect defenses costs far too much Essence to be viable. All it takes is one Extra Action charm to annihilate their Essence pool.
As I already said, leaping dodge Charms own extra action Charms. Not spamming perfect defenses costs far too many characters to be viable. In above-mentioned campaing, where enemies certainly were far below Solar scale, I was forced to fudge damage dice in about every second serious fight, to keep characters from dying. Exalted are way too fragile for a world without resurrection.


Well yeah, throwing has a niche - sneaky and quick assassination. Being good at this is not the same as sucking. And if swords supposedly suck, then what weapons don't? And what indicated does a weapon suck or not?
See above about weapons. And sneaky and quick assassinations stop working quite quickly, as major enemies start using perfect anti-surprise Charms. They are only viable against spitits and unexperienced Exalted.


As for the rest of your post, my experiences with Exalted are different - I've seen many essence-using enemies defeated before they burned all their essence, by exploiting their weaknesses.
You see, the problem with exploiting weakness lies in the fact, that if you exploit enemy's Flaw of Invulnerability, you win, unless the enemy is so crazily overpowered that he can keep up even without 90% of his defense or uses one of the two possible soakmonster builds. Therefore, making enemies with exploitable Flaws usually feels like handling their heads to PCs on a silver platter. It can work once or twice, with boss enemies, but you shouldn't depend of such massively favorable circumstances to win ordinary battles.

Lost Demiurge
2009-02-09, 01:52 PM
Exalted ain't a bad game. You need a good GM and players to get the most out of it, but that's the same anywhere you go. It isn't a good game for rules lawyers or folks who worry about balance, though. Kinda messy, same as any White Wolf game that goes on long enough.

Watch out when you ask about it online, though. A lot of the fanbase decide after they play a few games, that they're experts and start telling you that YOU MUST HAVE THIS CHARM OR YOU WILL DIE!

or

YOUR BUILD IS SUBOPTIMAL AND WILL SUCK WHEN YOUR GM CHALLENGES YOU!

or

YOU NEED A PERFECT DEFENSE IN YOUR STARTING CHARMSET!

or

YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO KILL 6 DRAGONBLOODED A ROUND OR YOU SUCK ROFLFLFLFL!

Folks like that drain all the damn fun out of it for me, at least when reading about it online. Frak'em, and give it a shot. Play how you like, and trust your GM to set the power level, rather than the min-maxing "experts".

Artanis
2009-02-09, 02:10 PM
FatR, you're taking everything that can be countered in Exalted, and pretending that it can't be countered in DnD. You're taking everything that can be done in DnD, and pretending that it can't be done in Exalted. And you're ignoring literally every single mitigating factor of the problems you present in Exalted, while dismissing every single problem of the things you mention about DnD. For example:


3)Stunts. Everyone does 2-die stunts all the time, this is, like, as mandatory to surviving combat as swinging your weapon. This is also very easy. 3-die stunts, on the other hand, are almost impossible. So, stunt quality makes no difference, unless the Storyteller goes easy on players and gives NPCs reduced stunt awards.
That's half the POINT of Exalted. Exalted is about being awesome. And in the end, the guy who is more awesome wins. If one guy is just standing there stabbing while the other guy is swinging from a chandalier over to a balcony, which he then jumps off of, landing on a table from which he slices his sword made of Awesome-ite into the torso of his opponent, the boring guy loses.

You see this as a "flaw" in the system, that people have to be creative. But you ignore the "flaw" in DnD that a lot of times, being creative is worse than just saying "I attack".

What about the earlier comment about the guy wanting to surf down the mountain on a shield? Try that in DnD, it's liable to backfire. Try that in Exalted, you're liable to win because of it.


What you mean by "cinematic", if characters are not supposed to fight in Exalted? Why 2/3 Charms and rules in the game are devoted to combat, if he is supposedly boils down to Storyteller declaring the winner?
You are deliberately misinterpreting the guy's statement with this. Exalted combat is combat just like DnD combat is combat. You assume that the only reason ever to have combat, however, is to kill people and take their and/or their boss's stuff.

Exalted combat isn't about the rewards, it's about the combat itself. It's about people with giant swords pulling insane stunts to decapitate giant robot-hydra gods, not about the +1 Flaming Longsword you get from him afterwards. You act as though the only purpose of combat is to get where you're going, that it's merely an obstacle to be overcome. But that's not what Exalted is about, it's about being a legend, a superhuman being chosen by the greatest gods in existence, not just being badass. It's about being great, not just being deadly. It's about a shining beacon of the sheer greatness of the sun, moon, stars, life, or death using that power for great things, not just about defeating enemies.

And you refuse to accept that.


Join Battle perfectly counters social stuff, you know.
You act as though the ST will let this work every time, but won't stand for it in DnD. What makes you so confident that a DnD GM will let a player get away with this any more than an Exalted ST will? If you draw your swords and attack the king, you're going to have bodyguards all over your ass before you can blink in BOTH systems, but you act as though it will only happen in DnD.

And in DnD, that king is rarely capable of even threatening the players. In Exalted, if you attack the wrong king, you're liable to wind up fighting an unbeatable avatar of elemental fire itself.



And sneaky and quick assassinations stop working quite quickly, as major enemies start using perfect anti-surprise Charms.
Only if the ST wants it this way. A DnD GM can shut down any character at any time, but he doesn't, because that makes things suck for the player. How many discussions have there been about how hard a GM is trying to do the exact opposite, and make one of his players useful? Why do you automatically assume that an Exalted ST won't do the same?

Iethloc
2009-02-09, 03:36 PM
Join Battle perfectly counters social stuff, you know. And, it is completely impossible to convince anyone of anything unless the target feels like being convinced or you use a direct mindcontrol Charm which is a sufficient provocation to kick your ass even for nice guys and will not work before they start kicking your ass.

Then don't social attack them directly. Ruin their reputation. That can screw over a Dragon-Blood quite nicely, and bring the Wyld Hunt down on a Celestial Exalt. Let's see how many times you can spam "LOL, SSE" against a group of 10 Essence 6 Dragon-Bloods specifically built to kick your ass. It's thousands of Dragon-Bloods vs you, they can certainly afford to send that many against something with literally unlimited potential.


This depends on them being idiots and not formulating their motivation as "best warrior", even if the Storytellers feels like telling you such minute details of their motivation.

Investigation charms. You know everything about them...everything.



3 levels of damage is 40% of your health. Spirits that can match starting Solars do as much on average Essence ping, making armor near-worthless. Other Exalted don't do as much, except that they can easily crank their damage to levels that also invalidate armor (because, even before Charms, the best core armor cannot negate more than 2/3 damage from grandklaive, which is not the most damaging weapon, and Stamina adds to soak half of what Strength add to damage). As a result, say Dragonblooded characters (no early perfects, no good early offense) that are made for working within a concept, not for power, tear each other apart within 10 ticks, as I had enough opportunities to observe during my two-year 2E campaign. The only characters that can depend on soak at all are Twilights and Godzilla Lunars.
Also, Ox-Body Techique is among worst investments you can ever make, barring some Lunar builds. It is entirely useless against killer combos and makes you survive one more normal hit, at best.

If every enemy is wielding a "grandklaive" (grand DAIklaive) or a (possibly grand) goremaul, then that's like equipping every encounter in D&D with +5 Vorpal Greatswords.



Some enemies are weak and gimped. Wizards in DnD too can suck if you deliberately outfit them with crap spells. Also, Goremauls aren't good against an enemy with a full defensive kit (because of their Rate).

When have you ever needed Rate? I haven't. I use extra action charms and ignore it.



That's why it sucks, unless you outmatch your opponent significantly.

Well, since you have enough dodge to use SSE all the time, you should have a decent dodge DV and not need to waste the motes on a perfect defense until your opponent breaks out combos of death.



Defense is pointless. You ignore mooks and perfect-spam against serious opponents anyway. Good weapons have Piercing tag, big damage and Rate greater than 1. Accuracy wont' hurt too, but 1-2 dice of difference don't mean much in the world of 13+ dice basic pools. So, instead of "swords" you can say "Grandklaive".

Perfect spam? Say goodbye to willpower. And defense is most certainly not pointless. Most of my guys have 8+ DV BEFORE CHARMS. I rarely even need a perfect defense. My base DV is high enough to allow me to survive. So, you're just optimizing offense while using perfect defense in place of a DV. You'll run out of motes quickly that way, and, unlike SSE, my high DV works without any motes.



As I already said, leaping dodge Charms own extra action Charms. Not spamming perfect defenses costs far too many characters to be viable. In above-mentioned campaing, where enemies certainly were far below Solar scale, I was forced to fudge damage dice in about every second serious fight, to keep characters from dying. Exalted are way too fragile for a world without resurrection.

Monkey Leap Technique. Racing Hare Method. Just track the guy down, there are Survival charms for it. And if they're really that invested in RUNNING AWAY, then they deserve to have the ability to avoid every fight. And if you're fudging damage dice, obviously your players did not invest in soak. In my games, we could take 8 aggravated damage levels and not blink; our DV's and health pools were high enough to do it.



See above about weapons. And sneaky and quick assassinations stop working quite quickly, as major enemies start using perfect anti-surprise Charms. They are only viable against spitits and unexperienced Exalted.

If you're using Surprise Anticipation Method, that requires that you have a chance to notice the attack in the first place. Ebon Lightning Prana. And not being able to use surprise attacks never stopped any of my characters; they used weapons with good accuracy, and either hit an opponent, or forced them to waste motes on a perfect defense.



You see, the problem with exploiting weakness lies in the fact, that if you exploit enemy's Flaw of Invulnerability, you win, unless the enemy is so crazily overpowered that he can keep up even without 90% of his defense or uses one of the two possible soakmonster builds. Therefore, making enemies with exploitable Flaws usually feels like handling their heads to PCs on a silver platter. It can work once or twice, with boss enemies, but you shouldn't depend of such massively favorable circumstances to win ordinary battles.

Wait, so, exploiting an enemy's flaws is not a valid strategy?

And if every enemy can be exploited in the same way, you're doing it wrong. Every compassion flaw user has different intimacy, every conviction user has a different motivation, and even the environment changes the way you have to exploit Valor and Temperance flaws.

Kyeudo
2009-02-09, 05:30 PM
Whatever game FatR thinks he's been playing, it isn't Exalted. He's treating the very most central rule of Exalted, the Stunt Rule, as though it were a mere Essence battery to be exploited. This is not how Exalted plays.

I've watched Exalts get by on nothing but a single Excellency in combat. I've been a sword-monkey Solar stripped of my sword and still won the fight on nothing but my Dexterity pool and stunt dice.

Yes, you can go for super-mega-death-beam-spam-destroy-anything-in-one-hit super combos, but frankly you'll drain dry against anything with a good DV that can stunt harder than you can. You just can't sustain hyper-Combos round after round until you are deep into play.

Jerthanis
2009-02-09, 06:09 PM
You will have to describe the builds that you think can easily beat a third-circle demon. :smalltongue:

An Essence 4 Lunar with several iterations of Impressions of Strength along with Lightning Stroke Attack can go 1v1 with a 3rd circle demon. Solar Archers at Essence 3 can probably manage alright, although they'd need Immanent Solar Glory three times and Willpower 10 if they want something close to even odds.

Sidereals need to wait for Sidereal Martial Arts, so they need to wait a bit longer.

Now... fighting one 3rd circle demon to a standstill is one thing... fighting off 5 second circle demons is something else entirely. Fighting 5 second circle demons with 250 first circles forming a Mass Combat Unit under them is something else else beyond. There's personal power, and there's power that lets you shatter any nation in Creation, and Sorcery-summoning lets you get to the second one faster, largely skipping the Personal power step... and I think that's the intent.

Terraoblivion
2009-02-09, 06:53 PM
Except for, you know, the amount of personal power needed to summon the good demons representing such an investment that characters focusing on attaining Creation shattering power can achieve it just as easily. It is not that hard to get an entire nation to follow you, including at least a contingent of dragonblooded, thaumaturgists, enlightened mortals and others that can make your army more than a match for the demonic force. And sheer personal power can actually make you strong enough to just crush what you described. And artifice can make you make WMD's that render them moot and so on. There are many ways to power.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 01:29 AM
(Yes, yes, I know, finding opponents willing to wait until the next Calibration so you can risk not only your own life but the introduction of a major threat to Creation simply to win one fight is not a very common scenario. But still.)


Well, with my 4 or 3 other allies I got from the start of the game, who would all be around the same power level as they should get similar XP like a normal character, all of them and my character should be around the same power level as the summoner. Odds are in my favor to begin with. If I wanted to be simply contrary and meta gamy I could have one be a caster from the get go and just have a 3rd circle demon take on another 3rd circle demon and skip that whole fight to go after the caster himself.

Still, a 3rd level demon if you are an appropriate power level for it should not cause you much concern even 1 on 1 with plenty of builds, there are some who have gone over it.

I also don't play 2nd ed, so I have no idea, and frankly have no care to know, how it runs. 1st ed as i've said is morethen enough fun for me. Not that I won't support WW, I think they are much better at making games then WoTC...I just won't buy nWoD or 2nd Ed Exalted. There is still Scion and things like that. Heck, if they do a full Infernal Exalted book this time I might pick it up, as the Akuma were a major let down in 1st ed.

But thats pretty lame.

I never found the Abysaal's or Solar's all that fun, Dragon Blooded I found to simply be more fun to play. No perfect defenses, no unblockable attacks. No INSTAWINLOLOLOLOLL!!!1! moves.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 01:46 AM
All this talk about the power difference being one of ABSOLUTE POWAH and horrible weakness is kinda scary to someone who's only been raised on D&D like myself.:smalleek:

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 02:00 AM
I really feel that this thread has done a poor job translating how balanced the system really is Zousha. Its really not all that bad. I personally have never seen a conmpletly awful build.

Its all how you use your character. Charms and things like that are secondary, or at least when my group plays. Its not about the combat, its about the story over all, how the world interacts with itself in its on dynamic. I mean heck, the Dawn Caste starts off with all the combat Abilities, but honestly, you don't have to play a brutish warrior, you can make any sort of character you can think of, there is almost no limits to the range of characters you can make. Unlike D&D where you are far more confined to the grid and the grinde

Kyeudo
2009-02-10, 02:10 AM
All this bickering about who can take what how is really dragging this thread down. This is Exalted we're talking about.

Yes, the only assumption of game balance is that everyone in the circle can usually snag the same charms with varying amounts of ease. Yes, the company that makes it is full of stuck up snobs. Who cares?

When you get down to it, playing Exalted is like riding a rollercoaster. It has its ups, its downs, it throws you for a loop, and then it comes screeching to a halt when the session ends and you can't wait to get back on and go again.

Exalted is a game where you don't just stab the elephant in the toes until it dies, you climb up its back, kill the driver, and take it rampaging through the enemy army cutting a swath of destruction a mile wide, then name the elephant Shep and keep it as a pet just because you feel like it.

Exalted is a game where you don't just get your mission from the king, but you convince the king his plans have flaws and that he needs a new vizier, then use him as a front to keep the Wyld Hunt off your back while you rally the Scavenger Lands into a massive alliance to deal with the Mask of Winters.

When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, unless you're playing Exalted, in which case you make a four course banquet. Surrounded and outnumbered ten to one? Most games you are screwed to high heaven. Exalted? You and your circle fight back to back like badasses until either none stand in your way or you die atop a mountain of corpses, with your enemies telling tales of your skill for generations. Chained hand and foot while naked in an Imperial dungeon awaiting execution? In other game systems you hope your buddies can rescue you fast enough. In Exalted, you break the chains through sheer force of will, pick the lock with your teeth, kill the guards with your bare hands, storm the keep alone, drag the commander kicking and screaming to the courtyard and hang him from the gallows meant for you.

Of course, there is a price for all that awesome. You can not plan ahead as a Storyteller. A D&D character is limited to only so many things they can do, so you only have to take those things into account as a GM. There are only a few things an Exalted character can't do, so you can't rule anything out. An Exalt might pursue a vendetta personally, or he might decide to take over the next kingdom over and borrow its army. He might sneak in to steal the crown jewels, or he might trick the guards into letting him walk in and take them from plain sight.

In running games, I've had to take a step back and look at the big picture and use that to improvise what opponents do next. I have to try and manipulate my players just like my villian would try. My plans and his plans become almost one and the same. Sometimes, I'm not so much the Storyteller as another one of the players, revelling in the same world that they are.

That is Exalted.

Tam_OConnor
2009-02-10, 03:01 AM
I speak not as an Exalted player, so please don't lynch me.

I read Keychain of Creation, and it is an excellent webcomic. The intro comic to the first edition was delicious. I love wuxia. I love the Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords (except for Crusaders). In short, I'm moderately certain that I would love the setting.

My players are mad power-gamers. They were raised on 3.5; it is their nature. They favor gritty games, which high-level power-gamed 3.5 play qualifies as.

So we play Mutants and Masterminds.

My advice: You can't game alone, so see if your gaming buddies are into it. Or find a good online group. So not terribly helpful advice, really.

Kantolin
2009-02-10, 03:41 AM
I must say, I really like Kyeudo's analysis. Exalted is meant to be epic beyond epic, the game where you can do nuts things.

The real beauty is in the setting. It does have the annoyance, even moreso than D&D, that nobody likes every part of Exalted: Some people loathe games with Solars in them, some don't like it when you shine the spotlight too much on sidereals, some can't stand playing as dragon blooded, and heck, my favorite group are the Dragon Kings, which nobody seems to like.

But on that same note, there seems to be something in Exalted for everyone - you can usually find a combination which makes everyone in a given group happy, even with varied tastes. Heck, I've been in a very enjoyable game where a group of very mundane heroic mortals as PCs went to try to kill the brotherhood of dragon blooded who were oppressing their hometown.

[It actually, from a technical point of view, went really poorly, but man was it epic getting there!]

The mechanics are... actually a similar feeling of up and down to me. They're insanely fun, especially at first, albeit dependant far more heavily on your DM than D&D. Most of the people in our group 'stunt' all the time in pretty much any system, so that wasn't particularly different about Exalted - but it gets very fun when the storyteller emphasizes the magnitude of your abilities. Death by Obsidian Butterflies is awesome of a 'Oh, an army. *handwave*', and I really love 2e's tick system as exalts flow around the battlefield. I then thematically like the give and take of typical exalt v exalt combat - not to mention lunar explosion-tactics, dragon blooded teamwork charms, etc.

The down then comes with the fact that, well... it's maddeningly easy to end up with a team of people that are wildly unbalanced with each other, even in the same type of exalt. And, as tends to happen in most white wolf games, it's like they didn't care enough to balance a lot of things - discovering what works and what really doesn't is annoying as they're both presented as theoretically equal options. 1e has the additional problem that some groups just can't reasonably do certain things (Ride and/or Sail tend to be terrible for some people, usually for no reason), and it also makes you painfully defenseless even to normal people without doing something creative. 2e helps fix or at least patch both of those problems a bit (Excellencies and Defense Values), but comes with its own problems - some people prefer one, some the other.

So really, moreso than D&D, your enjoyment of Exalted depends on your group and Storyteller. Get a group that's willing to sit down and have fun and you're likely to. When something happens that hurts the experience, either fix it as a group or just keep coasting - and work with the storyteller to increase the awesome.

I do think in the end, I like D&D a bit more, but I must say: Exalted's insanely fun.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 03:55 AM
Magic is clearly different in the world of Exalted, and its wonderful for it.

I've honestly never seen the logic behind caster v melee arguments. I mean, one wiggles his fingers and chants gibberish and tells reality to shut up and take 5, the other guy hits you with a sharp stick. I find that Exalted took that and gave magic in some form to everyone, Sorcery isn't always as powerful as some Charms, and it really depends on what Exaltation you are how much power you can bring to bare.

Sure DoOB is a powerful spell, but look at some of the Solar Circle stuff. Absolutly obscene in every manner of the word. Sidereal Martial Arts makes the Immaculate Dragon Paths look....like grade school tricks. And those compared to the God Blood or the Dragon Kings are pretty nuts to.

BobVosh
2009-02-10, 07:15 AM
I love the dragon kings Kantolin. Although they aren;t nearly as powerful or able to do as many neat things they rock. Although my favorite one ran at about mach 3, crash into a mountain and died :(

Kyeudo has it right as far as it goes.

The mechanics are pretty terrible, and 2ed kinda lost some of the 'epic' feel when it lost the contested rolls. Each player dumping a bucket of dice versus another bucket added something I miss. Although it did make it go faster.

Exalted is all about showing how insane you can be, and your ST is far too generous if you get 2 dice stunts all the time. I give dice penalties for not describing a bit, with a few exceptions. Also just restrict your flaws of invulnerability. It better be something that comes up.

If you ever spend that much time with mechanics in exalted you are doing something wrong. I wanted to kill my friends horse (he was being an ***) so I pile-drived it down 2 miles. As a lesson.

Evil DM Mark3
2009-02-10, 09:20 AM
What is exalted like? Let me describe my most recent session.

A Brotherhood of Dragon blooded consisting of: A Kung Fu monk who kicks several flavors of ass with a pair of short swords. Technically speaking the last member of a now dead legion (all other officers took new commissions) suffering from acute post traumatic stress and self medicating by hunting the undead. A soft hearted party boy who gave up administering his uncle's brothels to have an adventure. A native of the frozen north who was originally spying on the rest for the secret service. A sorcerer who is son to a bureaucrat and an admiral who took up sorcery more or less as a hobby. The bastard son of a ruined family in the biggest joke of a Noble House the realm has with a giant sword. has arrived in a forgotten city in which is located a cache of ancient war weapons they intend to donate to the cause of one of the contenders for the Imperial throne. They discover several suits of ancient power armor and proceed to equip them as the playboy uncovers a damaged screen that reveals that there is much larger stockpile of stuff deep in the city, that there is a small army of undead bearing down on them and that the city's defense system has activated. Said defense system is a happy little device known as a Soulbreaker, a weapon that, if it detonates, blasts the soul of everything within 5 miles out of their body.

So, spanking in their new armour they head down into the city to try and deactivate the Soulbreaker, fighting off waves of undead as they go. Then, as they approach the area where the soulbreaker is kept they encounter the undead's general, an entity known as an abyssal who has been stalking them for months. This gentleman agreed, at the point of his death, to serve an insane ghost in her quest to destroy all life in exchange for his own life and power. He swoops down on them, backed by his zombie and ghost hoard, on a bladed hoverboard wearing his own power armour. In the first few round of the fight he simply skims overhead, decapitating and dismembering the various mortal followers the Dragonblooded had with them while the undead start to wear them down. On his fourth pass the spy jumps up and dropkicks him of his board and they proceed to beat on him, missing most of the time as they slice at thin air. He knocks the sorcerer and playboy unconscious and then calls back the hoverboard. As is screams in to view the monk knocks it flying into the Abyssal. As it sweeps by the monk jumps on and the abyssal grabs to the blades on the underside.

The spy brings the sorcerer round and he casts a spell that makes a whirlwind for his personal transport use to let him and the othr dragonblooded chase down the hoverboard.

Let us recap.

Five injured PCs traveling by whirlwind and chasing down an undead superman and the sixth PC on a bladed hoverboard.

The Monk tries to dislodge the abyssal as the abyssal flips the entire thing upside down, so it is now flying upside down with the monk hanging to the bottom. The monk jumps up and the two exchange blows and the abyssal shatters his arm. As the whirlwind closes the monk grabs the abyssal with his one good arm and thrown himself off the board, disarming both of them in the process.

So they start to fall.

The abyssal knocks the monk out with a headbutt and uses him as cover from the other PCs' attacks as he tries to find a way to stop his fall. This becomes a moot point as the Dragonblooded with the giant sword jumps down from the whirlwind and smashes into the abyssal, throwing the monk up to his team mates and using the abyssal to soften his crash into the earth where, exhausted and out of magic, the Abyssal finally makes the appointment with the Grim Reaper he had avoided several years previously.

OK so it was a big session. I don't claim that sorcerous flight and what one of the players called "strategic falling" are the mainstay of exalted combat. But we have had bigger sessions that have got even weirder.

Killersquid
2009-02-10, 10:27 AM
Don't worry Exalted lovers, you have another one among you, and I found this gem too:


There is sadly not a whole lot of support for either 1st ed or 2nd ed on these forums. Been trying to get a Dragon Blood game started for a while, but it quickly falls to the 3rd or 4th page in a day or two.

Innis, I would gladly play a game with you, but I am in college most of the time studying or at class. What times would you do such a campaign?

Rad
2009-02-10, 12:20 PM
Exalted... I have been amazed by the fluff and very curious about the crunch since I got the core (2nd ed.) handbook as a birthday present (a.k.a. my precious :smallwink:).
I never played PbP as the idea never fully convinced me but if it means trying out exalted... I might give PbP a try too, so count me in! (can I play a sidereal?)

Artanis
2009-02-10, 12:55 PM
I must say, I really like Kyeudo's analysis. Exalted is meant to be epic beyond epic, the game where you can do nuts things.
QFT. The way I like to describe it is like this:


Imagine that you are one of the greatest heroes the world has ever seen.

Now imagine that the God of Awesome, whose Awesome literally lights up the entire world, personally decides to empower you with a piece of that Awesome.

Now imagine that that power gives you the might to kill an outright deity who is piloting a giant robot armed with vaporization cannons...with your bare hands.

Now realize that this is merely the beginning.


THAT is Exalted.

Morty
2009-02-10, 01:01 PM
Whoa. And to think I consider 3ed D&D epic levels to be too over-the-top and superpowerful -their brokennes aside, I'm talking about the premise here- for me.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 01:07 PM
Me too. A game with that level of power, well, it sounds like the Dragonball Z of the roleplaying world, where everything IS OVER 9000!!!

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 01:29 PM
Innis, I would gladly play a game with you, but I am in college most of the time studying or at class. What times would you do such a campaign?

Oh hey, PbP any time, if we could get a storyteller, I know I can get a few players up, its just that one last bit thats the problem. We've got an game on going here, the first i've ever seen for 1st ed, done by Nova. So if your interesed in joining that one its a slow mover but so far its been pretty neat. I can PM you a link to the game if you'd lile, but honestly getting more then one game going on these boards would not be a bad thing at all.

I myself am ST'ing a game for some friends over RPOL along side a Vampire game, so STing is sadly out as the Exalted game has 3 different groups running in the same story.

Kyeudo
2009-02-10, 01:40 PM
Whoa. And to think I consider 3ed D&D epic levels to be too over-the-top and superpowerful -their brokennes aside, I'm talking about the premise here- for me.

Nothing is too epic for Exalted. Conquering the world is a solid choice as a motivation for a starting character. Conquering Hell itself would be a good motivation to switch to once you accomplish the first.


Me too. A game with that level of power, well, it sounds like the Dragonball Z of the roleplaying world, where everything IS OVER 9000!!!

Did we mention the anima banner? The more power you burn, the more you glow, until you are surrounded by a blazing halo of power that manifests both the glory of your particular Exaltation and an image totemic to your character. For Solars, this defaults to gold.

Other than making everyone within miles aware of how awesome you are, it serves as the single greatest limiter on your character. Most types of Exalted are hunted by the Dragon-Blooded, who believe them to be essentially demonspawn in human skin. If you start glowing, there is no way to explain away your supernatural skill, especially after you just single-handedly defeated the local bandit lord's entire band of thugs without breaking a sweat.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 01:43 PM
And in the case of the Dragon Blooded, it rends the very ground and surronding structures around you to rubble, melted slag or dust unless its made of honest sturdy stuff

Kyeudo
2009-02-10, 01:50 PM
Heck, Exalted is so epic, you could fill a circle with Cloud Strife, Goku, Raistlin Majere, Kakashi, and Light Yagami and not have it seem strange.

Oslecamo
2009-02-10, 01:57 PM
Other than making everyone within miles aware of how awesome you are, it serves as the single greatest limiter on your character. Most types of Exalted are hunted by the Dragon-Blooded, who believe them to be essentially demonspawn in human skin. If you start glowing, there is no way to explain away your supernatural skill, especially after you just single-handedly defeated the local bandit lord's entire band of thugs without breaking a sweat.

Not only that, it also makes stealth impossible. It's kinda hard to hide when the better you do it the more you glow. I perfectly remember from the rules that when you start to glow you get a fat penalty to hiding.

On the other hand, I always saw Exalted as a game for people who wanted to show off, so I guess a stealthy character is a pointless concept in Exalted.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 02:02 PM
Thats what your personal Essence pool is for. If you want to be stealthy the object isn't to do so much that you need to burn your larger pool.

Sicarius
2009-02-10, 02:06 PM
Believe it or not, unless you're playing a Dragon-Blooded, there are many opportunities for which to remain stealthy, unless you're about to die.

JMobius
2009-02-10, 02:07 PM
Nothing is too epic for Exalted. Conquering the world is a solid choice as a motivation for a starting character. Conquering Hell itself would be a good motivation to switch to once you accomplish the first.

Now if you want really Epic scale Epicness, in Nobilis, you could probably do both before lunch. :smallamused:

I must admit some curiosity for Exalted, though. From what I understand of its mythology, its pretty neat. All the allusions to clunky mechanics are a huge turn off, though, as well as the fact that it seems people have stronger feelings about the editions than 3E vs 4E...

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 02:19 PM
They may be stronger, but i'd say they are in no way as negative as the feelings between 3.5 and 4th ed.

Kantolin
2009-02-10, 02:35 PM
as well as the fact that it seems people have stronger feelings about the editions than 3E vs 4E...

Actually, I'm not sure it's quite that strong. Many people in the 3e vs 4e debate either refuse or genuinely don't like the other version.

With Exalted, it seems to be more: "Let's play a game! Second edition! Please second edition! Aw, it's first edition... mrr, fine, can we make this houserule?"

And:


I love the dragon kings Kantolin. Although they aren;t nearly as powerful or able to do as many neat things they rock.

Glee! Consider hope increasing, heh.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-10, 02:36 PM
Whoa. And to think I consider 3ed D&D epic levels to be too over-the-top and superpowerful -their brokennes aside, I'm talking about the premise here- for me.

DND epic levels are epic done wrong - unless you're a caster you only get a bit stronger and a bit tougher, but you can't really do anything more world-shattering that you couldn't have done before.


Not only that, it also makes stealth impossible. It's kinda hard to hide when the better you do it the more you glow. I perfectly remember from the rules that when you start to glow you get a fat penalty to hiding.

On the other hand, I always saw Exalted as a game for people who wanted to show off, so I guess a stealthy character is a pointless concept in Exalted.

Not only, as already mentioned, only burning peripheral essence causes you to glow, but the Night caste is all about stealth and their caste power lets them burn lots of motes and still not show their anima banner. The archetypical Eclipse is all about subtlety and working behind the scenes instead of showing off, too.

Oslecamo
2009-02-10, 02:49 PM
DND epic levels are epic done wrong - unless you're a caster you only get a bit stronger and a bit tougher, but you can't really do anything more world-shattering that you couldn't have done before.


You're completely right. You can fling planets as thrown weapons in pre-epic D&D(and being a noncaster), and correct me if I'm wrong, that's something even an exalted character would have trouble doing. So you indeed can get epic before 20th level in D&D.

On the other hand wotc released some nice epic rules upgrades on their site for free wich offer some nice alternatives to noncasters:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/drfe/20080428




Not only, as already mentioned, only burning peripheral essence causes you to glow, but the Night caste is all about stealth and their caste power lets them burn lots of motes and still not show their anima banner. The archetypical Eclipse is all about subtlety and working behind the scenes instead of showing off, too.

Hmm, I tought that would go as heresy in the exalted universe. Nice to see there's a spot for stealthy guys.

Morty
2009-02-10, 02:50 PM
DND epic levels are epic done wrong - unless you're a caster you only get a bit stronger and a bit tougher, but you can't really do anything more world-shattering that you couldn't have done before.


Hence "their bronkennes aside" clause. Even non-casters on epic levels are too much for me in D&D, no matter how it's resolved, because while you might not do anything "world-shattering", you're still supposed to take on Abominations and the like. Exalted is so much outside of my area of inerest it's not even funny.

Artanis
2009-02-10, 03:09 PM
Hmm, I tought that would go as heresy in the exalted universe. Nice to see there's a spot for stealthy guys.
Being epically stealthy is still epic :smallbiggrin:

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 04:51 PM
Heck, Exalted is so epic, you could fill a circle with Cloud Strife, Goku, Raistlin Majere, Kakashi, and Light Yagami and not have it seem strange.

And that's what scares me. Plus, it doesn't seem like there's any room for growth. I'm perfectly okay with being those BY THE END OF THE STORY. But right at the beginning? I don't have anything to work up to.:smalleek:

Tengu_temp
2009-02-10, 04:57 PM
And that's what scares me. Plus, it doesn't seem like there's any room for growth. I'm perfectly okay with being those BY THE END OF THE STORY. But right at the beginning? I don't have anything to work up to.:smalleek:

At the end of the game, you're powerful enough to stand against a whole kingdom full of nefarious god-like beings, and kick their asses.

By the way, many people tend to exaggerate the power of starting Solars - they're strong enough to single-handedly create kingdoms, but they're not Raistlin or DBZ-era Goku. Yet.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 05:07 PM
But what kind of plotline can accomodate characters like that?! That'd be like having the Fellowship barrel into Mordor and beat up Sauron! There's no excitement, no drama. Just awesomeness. Awesomeness is like Tabasco sauce. Just a little bit really adds some pizazz to that burrito. Too much, and you burn your mouth.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-10, 05:10 PM
You're forgetting that many of the opponents Solars face are even more high-powered than them. Don't tell me that ancient myths have no drama or excitement as well.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 05:19 PM
I always identified more with the myth of Perseus. He didn't have any superpowers or anything. All his power came from his gear, like a D&D character.

Nerd-o-rama
2009-02-10, 05:19 PM
Like Tengu said, Solars are basically a flashier version of Beowulf. They're AWESOME, but there's a lot of stuff that's even tougher and in some cases even more awesome to challenge them.

Aquillion
2009-02-10, 05:23 PM
They may be stronger, but i'd say they are in no way as negative as the feelings between 3.5 and 4th ed.
The differences aren't as big anyway. You could generally translate individual things between the editions with a few tweaks. They're not even as different as D&D's 2e vs 3e (although not as similar as D&D's 3e vs 3.5e). So there's not so much to get angry about anyway.


Hence "their bronkennes aside" clause. Even non-casters on epic levels are too much for me in D&D, no matter how it's resolved, because while you might not do anything "world-shattering", you're still supposed to take on Abominations and the like. Exalted is so much outside of my area of inerest it's not even funny.Yeah, if you don't like world-shattering power, playing a Solar game in Exalted is not for you (shattering the world is what the Solars do by definition. They're chosen because they have the will to do it, and the book says that they change the world even if they don't try to.)

However, you don't have to play a Solar game. Dragon-Blooded generally have their hands full just keeping the control of the world that they rule already (and I mean 'they' in an abstract sense, you wouldn't usually play one of the rulers.) The Sidereals, who work as celestial bureaucrats, could probably shatter the world but generally won't (the paperwork alone...!) The Abyssals... uh, yeah, more-or-less literally shattering the world is their job, so you might want to avoid those. And the Lunars have a big world-shattering plan, too, as I recall.

Although to be fair, there's one moderate-power Sidereal charm where you tie a belt around yourself, tie the other end to the land near you, then start running, dragging your local environment (say, a mountain, a forest, or a desert) through creation to put it somewhere else.


You're completely right. You can fling planets as thrown weapons in pre-epic D&D(and being a noncaster), and correct me if I'm wrong, that's something even an exalted character would have trouble doing.First you would have to tell them what a 'planet' is. :smallconfused:

(However, the Sidereals managed to break a constellation by accident, so it would probably be possible to break a planet -- if they exist, which they don't -- if you didn't mind the fact that it would doubtless tick off the Maiden associated with it.)

Tengu_temp
2009-02-10, 05:27 PM
I always identified more with the myth of Perseus. He didn't have any superpowers or anything. All his power came from his gear, like a D&D character.

This isn't a very good comparison, because Perseus succeeded mostly because of his resourcefulness, not because he was covered from head to toe in magic items - he had only a few, and their abilities were more utility than boosting his combat power.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 05:29 PM
And alot of the awsome power thats being brought up isn't what you get at the very start of the game.

Aside from the enemies that they have to face, Solar's arn't the only things you can play. You -can- play mortals and other beings who arn't nearly as powerful.

Ultimatly, if you want a good look at the system, you need to take a look at it yourself. Sure there is some awsome stuff you can do, but your not going to be a godslaying fire spitting mechrider at the start of the game. Your going to be (if your a solar) a hunted villian in a world that has forgotten any and all of the god your kind once did, with the whole world more or less your enemy. Its not like you are free to do what you want with people just laying back and taking it.

Not only that, but it really depends on your Storyteller, not all ST's are into the insane stuff that you -can- do. Some like to focus on gritter games. You just don't instantly learn how to do these things, it takes training time, information hunting, actually living in the world.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 05:31 PM
This isn't a very good comparison, because Perseus succeeded mostly because of his resourcefulness, not because he was covered from head to toe in magic items - he had only a few, and their abilities were more utility than boosting his combat power.

I still identify with him more than I do with Heracles, who seems more in line with what an Exalted character is like.

chiasaur11
2009-02-10, 05:40 PM
Actually, from what I've read, Nextwave would be a solid basis. I mean, the first issue: Aaron Stack kills a giant purple pantsed dragon-god by buzzsawing out the heart. It only builds from there. I mean, there's room for growth even from mt. awesome.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-10, 05:46 PM
Actually, when I mentioned myths I was thinking less Greek and more Celtic and Chinese. Still, Perseus was the son of Zeus, so he possessed strength and ability not available to mortal men, and he'd make a good starting-tier Exalted character - not all Charms are flashy, many of them simply boost your abilities. Items such as the flying sandals or invisibility helmet are very fitting for the theme in Exalted as well - especially since they were artifacts, not stuff crafted by some wizard to sell in a magic shop.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 05:54 PM
It's still scary to someone who's only ever played 3.5e and 4e D&D and has never had a character level up past maybe 3 or 4.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-10, 06:02 PM
As someone who has played RPGs from all spectrum of power, starting with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and ending with a homebrew Dragonball setting, I'd say it's useful for one to play, or at least familiarize with, a large variety of RPGs.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 06:05 PM
So I'm being prejudiced?

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 06:10 PM
Not the word i'd use.

Your simply looking at the game based on 4 pages of responses, some good and some bad, and forming an opinion, which probably not the best solution.

If anyone is really interseted in the system, take a look at it. Opinions are all well and good but if you really want to -know- about the system, do more research then getting an opinion.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 06:12 PM
What if I can't afford it though? I've spent all my money building my D&D collection which must be at least 50 books now. For years I've been curious about games like Vampire, Exalted, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Scion, but I've been too scared to try them because, for lack of a better way of saying it, they aren't D&D.

Emong
2009-02-10, 06:15 PM
Buy it as a PDF perhaps?

They normally cost less than $10 and every WW book has been released as one I believe.

Oslecamo
2009-02-10, 06:26 PM
First you would have to tell them what a 'planet' is. :smallconfused:

(However, the Sidereals managed to break a constellation by accident, so it would probably be possible to break a planet -- if they exist, which they don't -- if you didn't mind the fact that it would doubtless tick off the Maiden associated with it.)

A planet in this case would be some solid object of your size of choice weightening around several million billions pounds.

And then you throw it at your oponent's face. Or throw it and make it roll over an area crushing whoever is on the way.

Could you do it in exalted?(this is a serious question, till now I've just seen the surface rules of exalted, so i have no idea if that's possible or not).

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 06:32 PM
What if I can't afford it though? I've spent all my money building my D&D collection which must be at least 50 books now. For years I've been curious about games like Vampire, Exalted, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Scion, but I've been too scared to try them because, for lack of a better way of saying it, they aren't D&D.

You just need to take the risk. I've found plenty of awsome RPGs just by grabbing something off the shelf and buying it, like Ninja Burger and Kobolds Ate my Baby.

Its no more expensive for an Exalted book than it is for a D&D book. Pick up the Core rulebook for 2nd ed. Or go on Amazon and buy a 1st ed book for cheap. For that matter, go on Amazon and buy any of them for cheap.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-10, 06:34 PM
Lend a book from a friend is also an option. Or obtain it in a way that shouldn't really be mentioned here, but everyone knows what I'm talking about, and buy it for real if you like it.

Oslecamo
2009-02-10, 06:40 PM
Lend a book from a friend is also an option.

Wich reminds me, my university has a gaming club with the rulebooks for most board RPGs out there, and anyone can take a look just by passing there. Guess I never realized how lucky I was on having that.

On the other hand, finding the time to actually read those books it's another entire matter, since we cannot actually take them away from the club.

One way or another, simply going to a gaming store and asking the shopkeeper for a demonstrastion could be a good way to get an idea.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 06:43 PM
You just need to take the risk. I've found plenty of awsome RPGs just by grabbing something off the shelf and buying it, like Ninja Burger and Kobolds Ate my Baby.

Its no more expensive for an Exalted book than it is for a D&D book. Pick up the Core rulebook for 2nd ed. Or go on Amazon and buy a 1st ed book for cheap. For that matter, go on Amazon and buy any of them for cheap.

My parents are trying to limit how much money I spend on roleplaying games, and I don't know anyone who plays Exalted either here in La Crosse, and certainly not back home in Hastings.:smallfrown:

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 06:49 PM
There are other methods that've been mentioned, which I also cannot mention, though i'm sure you know what I mean.

Do you have a Barnes and Noble? Or a Boarders? Or a B.Daltons? Go there and perview, most places don't mind you sitting and reading books for a little while, heck I read most of Togari that way.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 06:53 PM
There's a Barnes and Noble, but not within walking distance. I don't have a driver's license or a car, and my mother would want me to focus on my homework instead anyway.

Oslecamo
2009-02-10, 07:00 PM
There's a Barnes and Noble, but not within walking distance. I don't have a driver's license or a car, and my mother would want me to focus on my homework instead anyway.

So what you're still doing here? Off with you lad! Board RPGs are great time eaters, and you should indeed be giving priority to your school work.

Your life has limited time, and unfortenely that time isn't enough to properly see and experience all the cool games in the world. Deal with it.

Exalted won't run away. Check it out when you're in vacation.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 07:03 PM
I'm multitasking. While waiting for new posts here I try to knock out another page or two of my Graduation Portfolio Reflective Essay.

Artanis
2009-02-10, 07:15 PM
FWIW, you can play Exalted with only the corebook. No having to buy three books like DnD has :smallwink:


And like Aquillion said, Solars aren't the only way to play the game. Exalted can do lots of things, including - and most people don't seem to realize this - gritty. In a Heroic Mortals campaign, you are completely outclassed by everything that's been mentioned in this thread.

Take Dragonbloods, for example: to a Solar, a DB is a threat, but a significantly outmatched one. To a Heroic Mortal, a DB is a nigh-unstoppable force of nature that you have to gang up on to stand a chance against. And DBs are the weakest Exalts.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 07:20 PM
Not only that, but what they lack in power they more then make up with social interaction and freedom's almost no other Exalt can brag.

Even outcasts have a higher degree of command over their lives, and are more accepted then the other Exalts, Lunar's especially.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 07:23 PM
Can I be frank? I hate the word "gritty." People almost seem to instantly equate it with "realistic", which it isn't always.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 09:04 PM
Did I...did I kill this thread or something?:smalleek:

Knaight
2009-02-10, 09:34 PM
Its been about three hours, so no, you haven't. That said, you should take a look at some non D&D stuff, find some good free PDFs online, and take a look at them once you get the chance. Fudge(www.fudgerpg.com) is my personal favorite, and a game I discovered by looking around for something other than D&D. Gurps Lite(the full version you pay for) also isn't bad.

Cubey
2009-02-10, 09:46 PM
Can I be frank? I hate the word "gritty." People almost seem to instantly equate it with "realistic", which it isn't always.

Just wanted to get that off my chest.

It depends on what they mean by gritty. It could be GRIMDARK, which is not like reality, but it also could mean that characters can die easily from a single wound, suffer from infection or illnesses, get seriously dirty when traveling (hence grit), etc. That's definitely more realistic.

Most of Exalted's grit comes from the fact that with so many supernatural or demigod-like beings around, normal humans are the bottom of the bottom of the food chain. It's really difficult for them to stand up to dangers of such high caliber and survive, but it's the more epic if they succeed.

However, White Wolf at times focused on how the Creation is full of almost casual death, plagues, slavery and other violence. But it got downplayed in 2nd ed, and even before it applied only to certain places (like Nexus, which is a gigantic metropolis consisting only of Bad Neighborhoods). Usually, life in Exalted's world seems to be better than during RL middle ages, if there isn't any vengeful spirit/horde of barbarians/Fair Folk/rogue Exalted around to try and gut you. Which doesn't occur too often, fortunately.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 10:06 PM
So let me see if I have this straight. The world of Exalted is divided between mortals and other characters, and the other characters are essentially demigods on earth. What's the zeitgeist of Exalted? The general theme around which the game centers? Because from what I'm seeing it's about being as cool as you possibly can with little concern for drama or stimulation of any kind, intellectual or emotional.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 10:14 PM
It depends on which Exalt/creature your playing.

Solars are trying to rebuild a world that was very literally robbed from them by their once Lt. and guards.

Lunar's struggle at the edge of creation against mind warping creatures and landscapes, or against the world that was built while they were driven to the very literal fringes of the world.

Dragon Blood can be just about anything, from being a bandit lord to the Marquis of your own trade company.

Abyssal's can either against the struggle of death, fighting to help the living much like Vampire Hunter D, or become enginies of destruction that seek only to further the goals of their Undead Solar Ghost Masters.

Sidereals can also fall into alot of the above, but Fate and the pattern of the world is a very real and big part of their character.

Playing a God Blood is sort of like playing the above without all the bells and whistles.

Lochar
2009-02-10, 10:17 PM
White Wolf's basis, at least for 2E, is there was a war a long time ago, and the greatest of the Exalted (The solars) were beaten (numbers baby, numbers).

The Exaltation of the Solars was locked away for a really, really long time.

Eventually, someone freed them.

However, only part of them are still Solars. The Neverborn (Primordal Gods that were killed. Think of them as the Titans in the Greek myths) and their minions took part of the exaltation and corrupted them.

Also, you have the Fair Folk outside of Creation that wish to return it to the nothingness of chaos.


On top of that, the Solars that Exalt now are basically criminals known as the Anathema, and are Kill on Sight with most of the rest of the Exalt.


There's ya some concern and stimulation.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 10:23 PM
They cut the story back it seems :smallconfused:

The Dragon Blooded had a Coup against the Solars who had become cruel and Tyrants because of a Curse laid upon their very Exaltation long in the mists of time by the Primordials, who they were created to fight by the gods. The Sidereal put it all togather because they used their astrology and saw if the Solar's stayed in power the world would be destroyed, and used the Dragon Blood who were already unhappy their once benevolent leaders treated them like utter crap or worse.

There was a big disease much later that swept through the world and killed 9 out of 10 people, which gave rise to the current situation in the world, with hte Scarlet Empire, which has recently lost their Empress.

But again, it really depends largly on what Exaltation you want to play which decides the tone of the game as well as the over all powerlevel of it all

wadledo
2009-02-10, 10:27 PM
They cut the story back it seems :smallconfused:

The Dragon Blooded had a Coup against the Solars who had become cruel and Tyrants because of a Curse laid upon their very Exaltation long in the mists of time by the Primordials, who they were created to fight by the gods. The Sidereal put it all togather because they used their astrology and saw if the Solar's stayed in power the world would be destroyed, and used the Dragon Blood who were already unhappy their once benevolent leaders treated them like utter crap or worse.

There was a big disease much later that swept through the world and killed 9 out of 10 people, which gave rise to the current situation in the world, with hte Scarlet Empire, which has recently lost their Empress.

But again, it really depends largly on what Exaltation you want to play which decides the tone of the game as well as the over all powerlevel of it all

No, that's 2e.

Also, how do the Dragon Kings fit into all that?
Are they like the Lunars, only older?:smallconfused:

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 10:32 PM
Thats both Wadledo. And the Dragon Kings in 1st ed at least existed before the Exalts, the first chosen of the Unconqured Sun

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 10:32 PM
So who are the good guys and who are the evil guys? That's really the kind of character I'd like to play. The noble paladin who charges in, holy sword drawn to smite the wicked and protect the innocent from evil. :smallconfused:

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 10:34 PM
There are no clear cut bad or good guys. Though the demons (Yozi) and the Malfeans (Dead Primordials) and their servants the Deathlords and alot of the Abyssals are villans and are "classic" bad guys.

Humans can be villians, as well as any other Exalt. Fair Folk are often times antagonists as well.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 10:35 PM
Crap. Moral ambiguity makes my head hurt.:smallfrown:

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 10:36 PM
I find it alot better then an arbitrary set of letters. Its more realitic as well. Regular people don't have CG or TN branded on their bodies

Aquillion
2009-02-10, 10:38 PM
So let me see if I have this straight. The world of Exalted is divided between mortals and other characters, and the other characters are essentially demigods on earth. What's the zeitgeist of Exalted? The general theme around which the game centers? Because from what I'm seeing it's about being as cool as you possibly can with little concern for drama or stimulation of any kind, intellectual or emotional.
First of all, it is vital to understand (and this is something that most of this thread has left out) that Exalted is actually much less focused on combat than on many other RPGs you might be familiar with (D&D in particular). Only two or three of the Solar Charm trees focus specifically on personal combat, say, and there are entire ones devoted to things like Sailing, Teaching, Bureaucracy, Lore and Calligraphy; you could make a character built around any of those and still be exceedingly, world-shatteringly powerful.

Yes, it is possible to shatter the world with lore and writing ability. In fact, it's probably easier than doing it with your ability to swing around a Daiklaive -- remember that the Exalted universe is run by a Celestial Bureaucracy. The right letter to the right person in the Exalted universe could literally end up remaking the laws of physics if it was suitably convincing. There are secrets in the Exalted universe so explosive that knowing them and being mildly persuasive (and the Exalted are far more than mildly persuasive when they want to focus on it) could be enough to upset the entire established order. It is quite possible to run an Exalted game in which nobody ever swings a weapon in personal combat, if you want to, or one where it is exceedingly rare.

Almost every enemy the Exalted have is, at least in theory, subject to some degree of persuasion or negotiation -- even the Deathlords have peaceful contacts in Heaven. The Fair Folk are possibly the only exception, but they've been trying to destroy Creation since the beginning, and if you can unite or deal with everyone else or keep Creation's defenses operating then they aren't really a threat.

There are several ways you can run the game... but first, it's important to understand that while the Solars are demigods on earth (technically, in the first Age they outranked most of the gods), they are very far from all-powerful, and the Creation of the second age is a place in mortal peril. The canonical threats to creation include (but are by no means limited to):

* Armies of the dead, including Abyssals created from the Exaltations of Solars and with theoretically equal abilities, led by the ghosts of vengenceful first-age Solars who have access to powers, knowledge, and abilities that no one in creation can match, and who are themselves slaves to the Neverborn, ancient dead Primordials who shaped both the world and the Gods themselves in an age before time. This faction was responsible for the Great Contagion, a plague that killed 90% of Creation in the past, and there is absolutely no reason to think they couldn't do it again.

* The Fey, strange and bizarre creatures from outside Creation, who existed before the Primordials shaped Creation itself and have sought to return it to chaos for its entire existence. They are not subject to the laws of Creation (that is, the laws of physics), and are outside of Fate; they have the power to literally unmake reality, and in the wake of the Great Contagion they waged a war that unmade nearly half of Creation's land.

* The Yozi, sealed Primordials who survived the war that killed the Neverborn and surrendered to the Gods and Exalted, now sealed demon-princes living outside of Creation imprisoned in the immense, twisted body of their greatest leader. These are somewhat less of a direct threat than the above, because the great oaths they swore after their defeat prevent them from attacking Creation directly, but they are nonetheless a major danger.

In addition to these, Exalted have to contend with other factions, not necessarily enemies of Creation, but still generally quite dangerous to new Solars. First among these is the Realm, the largest kingdom in Creation, ruled by the weakest but most numerous sort of Exalted, the Dragon-Blooded. Originally foot-soldiers of First-Age Solars, they who formed the armies that overthrew those masters in the Usurpation at the end of the First Age.

They must contend with the Immaculate Philosophy, which teaches that Solar and Lunar Exalted are hated demon-possessed Anathema who nearly destroyed creation in their madness at the end of the first age (this is very nearly correct.)

They must contend with the Sidereals, the ancient Exalted advisors and astrologers who masterminded the Usurpation, who control the Realm from behind the scenes, who still hold power in Heaven and who retain almost all of their knowledge and power from the first Age. The most powerful Sidereals have lived for millennia, and are going to easily be strong enough to put down any new Solar in single combat.

They may have to contend with the Lunars, ancient shape-shifting mates of the Solars, led by powerful elders who are millennia old themselves, with memories of the first age and grudges to match; they have their own plans for Creation, which do not necessarily match with what the Solars want to do at all.

And they must contend with countless Gods and mortals, from the most powerful in Heaven down to the lowest shopkeeper, who have things invested in the current system (as corrupt and decadent as it is), and who will fight tooth and nail against any change. They must do this while struggling against their own internal demons -- the defeated Primordials at the end of the Great War placed a death-curse on all the Exalted, though it lays on the Solars most heavily, that eventually drives them to madness and excess. Nobody is aware of this curse aside from a few secretive deities, though almost everyone who lived long enough to see it became aware of its general effects (hence, the madness of the Solars at the end of the First Age.)

On top of all this, there are other potential dangers and risks, like the Autochthonians, other Solars with differing goals, rogue gods loyal to the old Primordials, and so on.

One thing to understand about Exalted, if you come away from all this with anything, is that you never play a 'generic' Exalted adventure -- there are no random dungeon-crawls, or fights against generic goblinoid opponents, or anything like that. It is not simply about being as cool as possible but about being epic (not just in fighting, but in diplomacy, in byzantine manipulations, in calligraphy -- in whatever you choose to focus on.)

While you could possibly beat all these opponents by swinging a sword, it is not necessarily appropriate to do so -- the Realm, say, is one of the few major forces of order in the world at the moment, and if you intend to destroy it (and don't just want to plunge the world into violent anarchy) you'd damn well better have a plan for what you intend to replace it with. Even if you could somehow murder all the Sidereals (or even just all the ones who oppose the Solars), doing so would earn you the enmity of a great deal of Heaven, and likely throw the Great Loom of Fate into chaos (which is not a good thing.) If you hit one enemy too hard without having a concrete plan, you'll just be opening the door for another enemy to slip into the power-vacuum you create. By default, while it can be played many ways and with many goals, Exalted is as much or more about building things as it is about smashing things.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 10:41 PM
But can you be a paladin?

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 10:42 PM
If you mean a religious warrior who both fights and casts in combat and holds to his devotion tighter then a starving man holds on to a piece of bread?

Yes, and without any of that silly Falling stuff.

Kantolin
2009-02-10, 10:44 PM
They cut the story back it seems

Oh nono, that was just the abridged version. ^_^

Personally, I'd have cut it down even further, but given it from both Solar and Dragon Blooded points of view.

Either way, the game can also be very heroic or not, depending on your game and style. Solars can be trying to overthrow the dragon blooded tyrants and reclaim their position so they can fix the bruised, battered world. Dragon blooded can be trying to stop the vile Solar monsters from wrecking creation, and continue trying to improve it to achieve greatness.

Or both groups can think they're right, and you can get very philosophical about things.

You can have tons of drama and growth between characters and other characters and/or setting, much like in most other RPGs. The major reason it's enjoyed is because the system specifically encourages you to do cool things while doing so.

I mean, 'group of heroes attempts to rid the world of (an) evil tyrant(s)' is a fairly default storyline in D&D and Exalted - especially Solar or Dragon Blooded play.

Demigods is really a good analysis, I think. You can eventually do anything, but there are still considerable threats to interact with, you can still have emotions, there are still character interactions, etc.

For example, in a recent two-player game I was involved in, the main characters were a dragon blooded and a lunar who were helping each other because they both wanted to save a city [which extrapolated into a sizeable chunk of creation] from the vicious villanous fae. The Dragon Blooded didn't care about the whole 'anathema' information he'd been raised on and just wanted to help people: the lunar was helping people, thus he was willing to put his reputation and life on the line to help. The Lunar, more or less, was originally planning on killing the dragon blooded as soon as he stopped being useful, as he assumed that the dragon blooded felt similarly, not to mention it was one of the city-made soft fools who was responsible for creation being as weak as it was.

Things then evolved from there, especially in the face of a pair of solars that neither lunar nor dragon blooded could do much about directly.

Ah, well. Exalted's very fun: Try seeing if they have an exalted book at the library if possible, or I also suggest checking out a Borders/Barnes & Nobles.

Edit: Also,


But can you be a paladin?

To answer that in specific: Yes. It's particularly easy to do so directly as a Solar or a Dragon Blooded. Both let you be the shining hero who stares evil in the face and does the right thing for all creation.

Both Solar and Dragon Blooded books also contain explicit examples of making them unquestionably 'right'. This can be done without wrecking the setting: If you don't want to deal with the 'but was it right for...', you don't have to.

Now, if you're a Solar hero (which is more or less the standard for a solar), it tends to be more of an 'evil is everywhere, and there's a lot of it'. So you can be very heroic and solve problems, but the army of the other side can and will kill you if they can confront you directly. Outsmarting the Wyld hunt can be a really fun part of the game. Most people have been told that you're a monster - you can then prove or disprove this fact to them individually (A town you saved from the ravages of the fae is likely to see you as the hero you are).

If you're a Dragon Blooded hero, then you are (insofar as the interaction with normal people) more visibly of a hero. You are one of the princes of the earth, and have the civilized world standing behind you. Evil is there, evil is very strong - you may have to outsmart a very powerful enemy rather than just walk up and smack it - but hey.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 10:49 PM
Ah, well thats good to know. I would have been very dissapointed had they cut the history down so much. It was easily one of the coolest things about it.

In my current game I am with all new players, and have kept all the information about the Solars from them, so they have no idea about what they really are, so they think they (As dragon blooded) are the real saviours of the world and that the Anathema are devils. Won't they be surprised.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 10:53 PM
If you mean a religious warrior who both fights and casts in combat and holds to his devotion tighter then a starving man holds on to a piece of bread?

Yes, and without any of that silly Falling stuff.

I mean the righteous knight who charges into battle to protect the innocent from the forces of evil. Galahad, The Redcrosse Knight, Roland. These are the heroes I want people to think of when they look at me.

Kantolin
2009-02-10, 10:57 PM
These are the heroes I want people to think of when they look at me.

The question then, is which 'people' are you referring to? If you mean, after your story is complete, would someone reading your book see your character as a hero? If so, absolutely and it's both Solar and Dragon Blooded (And could very easily be most of the others as well by default, nevermind the mild deviations from the norm).

If you mean in character, being the 'H-he's here! We're saved!', then that's easiest done by a Dragon Blooded, and is relatively the default when you're in the Realm. :P So yes, you again can.

Personally, I tend to play heroic characters myself.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 10:57 PM
Yes. You can play that. You can play anything you can think of. Its not restrictive in the slightest

Aquillion
2009-02-10, 11:20 PM
I mean the righteous knight who charges into battle to protect the innocent from the forces of evil. Galahad, The Redcrosse Knight, Roland. These are the heroes I want people to think of when they look at me.That is, more or less, the "default" assumption of Exalted when playing Solars; you can play in other ways, but that's what the Solars are meant to be. (Although, historically, they have often failed to live up to that standard; that's part of the tension of the setting -- and the reason many people won't trust you, as a Solar.)

The premise of the setting is that you are a mortal who has been anointed by the most powerful God in creation to go out and lay down the law against the unrighteous, to right wrongs, to put corrupt or disobedient gods back into line and defend creation against its enemies. You may have noticed that there were an awful lot of unrighteous enemies in that big list above.

If you go around lopping the heads off of Abyssals and, eventually, Deathknights in order to safeguard creation, people will call you a hero (maybe not the Immaculate Order, the Dragonborn, or the more corrupt gods, all of whom who have their own ill-gotten power to think about, but screw them.) If you kick down the door to a god who has been extorting prayer from desperate mortals and lay down some justice on him, people will call you a hero. The Exalted universe is, indeed, a world of shifting, corrupt gray-and-black morality, a place of byzantine plotting and backstabbing -- but the default Solar Exalted role in that universe is to be the shining unconquered point of light, the ancient redeemer and lawgiver reincarnated to save a world of sorrows in its most desperate hour. Creation is a world that really, really needs heroes right now; that's one of the driving themes of the series.

Now, in the Realm most people will not great you with open arms if you're a Solar, since they've been taught (against all logic) that people with the light of the sun blazing from their head in an eye-searing brand of raw power are demons. But in the rest of the world, especially in the wilds in the East, most people will have no trouble looking at a fight between a bone-pale warrior who reeks of death wielding a sword that screams with tortured souls fighting against a commanding and graceful warrior whose body glows with the inner glory of the sun itself and figuring out who is the good guy. The Immaculate Faith only stretches so far, and in most of Creation you are more likely to be judged by your deeds.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 11:39 PM
That's good to hear. I've always liked sun imagery actually.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 11:40 PM
Most people in the Realm will run in terror and find their local Immaculate if a Solar showed up, not just bare their doors. They are worse then Demons, they are THE devils of their religion, beings of such wretched darkness that even sin looks pristine next to them

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-10, 11:51 PM
So can your identity be found out just by someone looking at you? Don't Solars try to disguise themselves or hide what they are?

Innis Cabal
2009-02-10, 11:55 PM
You have to spend Perihperal Essence to have your mark show. Otherwise your safe

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 12:08 AM
Do you mean Peripheral?

Nerd-o-rama
2009-02-11, 12:10 AM
Crap. Moral ambiguity makes my head hurt.:smallfrown:You should avoid White Wolf Publishing in general, then.

However, Exalted in particular does make it easily possible to play a devoted, holy hero, Defender of the Innocent and all that jazz. However, there's a couple of caveats to it. If you're a Solar, your kind is prophesied to bring about the fall of the world, and in ancient times your subordinates rose up and overthrew you and (now that they rule the world) hunt you to this day. It's up to you to prove their fears wrong, and if you want to be really proactive, remove the corrupt and violent parts of their government that want to indiscriminately murder you. You won't be universally accepted, but you can bring back some (or all, depending how far you're willing to go) of the Solars' former glory and respect. Nothing keeps you from acting as a shining example of feudal heroism...as long as you don't go around ripping apart armies of evil Dragonblooded before you have a chance to accumulate some XP, of course. That'll just get you killed by the Wyld Hunt.

Or so I understand. I'm procrastinating starting my first game of Exalted, but I'm semifamiliar with the rules and setting.

Really, I'd encourage you (when you have time) to play any number of other games besides D&D. It's not the only or the best RPG out there, marketing clout aside, and you're missing a lot of interesting stuff if you limit yourself to one or two systems by the same company. That goes the same for Exalted fanboys who don't play anything else, or WoD-exclusive players, or GURPS fanatics, or anybody. Variety is the spice of life. Just don't spend too much time or money on RPGs while you're still in school, of course.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-11, 12:10 AM
Because from what I'm seeing it's about being as cool as you possibly can with little concern for drama or stimulation of any kind, intellectual or emotional.

Sorry for possibly sounding aggressive, but you're not being told this at all, by anyone, and this is probably just your prejudice against a system you're unaware of and therefore wary of. And that's leaving aside the fact that you can play any kind of game, no matter the depth, in ANY system, and that one could say that, judging from these forums, DND is all about building the biggest munchkin possible, with little concern for drama or stimulation of any kind, intellectual or emotional.

As for the current conversation topic, it's worth noting that people outside the Realm are a bit less hostile towards Solars, and most Solars tend to create cults/realms/enclaves of people who think they're not that bad pretty quickly.


I'm procrastinating starting my first game of Exalted

Bad Nerdo, I'm looking forward to this game and want to see it start ASAP! No cookie.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 12:18 AM
Sorry for possibly sounding aggressive, but you're not being told this at all, by anyone, and this is probably just your prejudice against a system you're unaware of and therefore wary of. And that's leaving aside the fact that you can play any kind of game, no matter the depth, in ANY system, and that one could say that, judging from these forums, DND is all about building the biggest munchkin possible, with little concern for drama or stimulation of any kind, intellectual or emotional.

You're not being agressive at all, Tengu (Can I call you Tengu?) You're right, the main reason I'm drawing that conclusion is because Exalted isn't D&D. Though judging by what's been said here, I'm gonna take a gander at it next time I go to Barnes and Noble. I have a $25 gift card burning a hole in my pocket that I have to spend SOMETIME, and it'll give me something to look at while I wait for Wizards to release Divine Power.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 12:29 AM
As for the current conversation topic, it's worth noting that people outside the Realm are a bit less hostile towards Solars, and most Solars tend to create cults/realms/enclaves of people who think they're not that bad pretty quickly.


There is also the Gold Faction to take note of, the book was also very well done. So Solar's are not without allies in the wide world of Exalted.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 12:34 AM
That's true (I took the liberty of taking a crash course on Exalted via Wikipedia. The resemblances to Greek mythology in the creation myth are startling.)

Tengu_temp
2009-02-11, 12:34 AM
Of course, the Gold Faction is not completely benevolent in their help and assistance towards newbie Solars...


Can I call you Tengu?

You should. I get annoyed when people add the _temp part. It's there only because my original account got broken and I can't access it.

As for the books, some advice - if you want to play as a Solar, you only need the main book. If you want to DM for Solars, you probably want the Storyteller's Handbook. If you want to play as other type of Exalted than Solar, you need their splatbook. Other splatbooks are either mostly descriptions of places, or add more options - Scroll of the Monk adds a lot of new Martial Arts style, for example.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 12:37 AM
I don't think there is a single group of people in all of the Exalted world that are truely and fully benevolent. They just help because they think they know the right way things should go, and the Solar's are a means to an end

Artanis
2009-02-11, 12:39 AM
Do you mean Peripheral?
All of the charms and whatnot in Exalted run off of Essence. It's the same general concept as mana, power points, etc: you get a pool of points that you spend to do stuff.

Exalts have about 1/3 of their Essence as "personal", and the rest "peripheral". If you spend personal essence, nothing shows up. If you spend peripheral essence, however, it starts to show as an "anima banner". As more and more peripheral essence is spent, first the caste mark* becomes visible, then it starts to glow too brightly to be covered up, then you start to glow, then you start to glow REALLY bright, then, finally, you basically light up like a bonfire that's visible for miles and which includes a figure (usually an animal or something) unique to the particular Exalt.

Dragonbloods are a bit different: they go through the same general thing, but have no caste mark or iconic image. What they DO have is the fact that their anima banner is dangerous. Fire Aspect DBs in particular will set things on fire when they light up.



*Exalts have a symbol on their foreheads corresponding to their "caste". It's normally invisible, but as mentioned, it becomes visible when peripheral essence starts getting spent.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 12:39 AM
I don't know if anyone plays Exalted in my area though. I suppose I could check with the local game shop, but I don't drive and I'm cripplingly shy about meeting new people face to face.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-11, 12:41 AM
I don't think there is a single group of people in all of the Exalted world that are truely and fully benevolent. They just help because they think they know the right way things should go, and the Solar's are a means to an end

Unless you start such a group, of course - the world of Exalted looks so dark on the first glance because it's up to the players to change it. Well, and it's not actually that dark on the second glance, too - not more than your typical medieval fantasy setting.


I don't know if anyone plays Exalted in my area though. I suppose I could check with the local game shop, but I don't drive and I'm cripplingly shy about meeting new people face to face.

I suggest PbP. Exalted works better that way anyway.

Artanis
2009-02-11, 12:46 AM
Or games using OpenRPG, Maptool, etc.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-11, 12:54 AM
And to add few words about paladins, the most common Virtue set I've seen among players so far was "high Compassion, high Valor, Red Rage of Compassion or Foolhardy Contempt as Virtue Flaw". It's hard to get more paladinish than that.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 12:58 AM
Virtue set? Virtue flaws?

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 01:07 AM
You have a set of 4 virtues, Compassion, Conviction, Temperance and Valor, and a flaw associated with which ever is scored higher.

You don't roll for stats, its a point based system.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 01:12 AM
Point-based? Remember, you're talking to someone who only knows how d20 works.:smallredface:

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 01:14 AM
It means you don't roll your stats, you have a certain ammount of points to put into abilities and things like that.

Think of it like point buy but on a 1 to 1 price.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 01:23 AM
Okay, now I gotcha.

Kyeudo
2009-02-11, 02:23 AM
I leave for a few hours and three pages come out of nowhere!

Zousha Omenohu, if you want to see how Exalted plays in action, here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80303) and here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100300) are two low end games of Exalted. I only say low end because both started with heroic mortals and there hasn't been much XP amassed in either game yet.


A planet in this case would be some solid object of your size of choice weightening around several million billions pounds.

And then you throw it at your oponent's face. Or throw it and make it roll over an area crushing whoever is on the way.

Could you do it in exalted?(this is a serious question, till now I've just seen the surface rules of exalted, so i have no idea if that's possible or not).

No one bothered to answer this question, so I will. Yes, you could eventually throw a several million pound object. I've got a starting Lunar statted out that can juggle mammoths in his human form. Crank him up to Essence 10 and he'll be pitching moutains when he feels like it.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 02:44 AM
I think maybe I'll try to join one (or start one on the forum I frequent most) when I get the books.

Aquillion
2009-02-11, 04:11 AM
I don't think there is a single group of people in all of the Exalted world that are truely and fully benevolent. They just help because they think they know the right way things should go, and the Solar's are a means to an endWell, some are close -- especially deities who are associated with things that are 'good', so they do well by doing good. At that point it's hard to make a distinction, since when you're a god of something good, being good is what you are (and it's worth pointing out that many gods fail at that, or are remiss in their duties.)

Uvanavu, the God of Health, say, is taking great personal risks, breaking the laws of Heaven, working himself to the bone, and making large numbers of enemies in order to spread health and improve Creation. Sure, he benefits from doing this, but he's a hell of a lot better than most people in our world, and most Gods in the Exalted universe don't take their jobs nearly so seriously. The other Syndics -- the Gods of Peace and Luck -- fall into the same category, though they're not going so obviously above and beyond the call of duty.

Ghataru, Shogun-Regent of the Seasons and Weather, Warlord of the Aerial Legion, and head of the Celestial Monitors of the Seasons and Weather is pretty heroic, too. As Warlord of the Aerial Legion, he could easily seize power in Heaven by force if he wanted it -- but he doesn't, because he honestly believes in the ideals of the First Age. He will cede control over the Legion when a suitable Solar asks, but he isn't so blind that he'd hand it over to the first inexperienced newly-exalted Solar who demands it.

The three gods of Great Forks who put aside their differences and united their people to defeat the Princess Magnificent (using storytelling as their weapon) probably count, too. I forget their names at the moment, but they were able to put aside their squabbling to give the Deathlords their only major defeat in Creation to date.

In general, the few Gods that are just trying to do their job are pretty damn heroic when you get down to it -- they're keeping the world running smoothly, they're generally preventing problems, and they're both passing up massive benefits and making potential enemies by avoiding corruption or factionalism. Lytek, (possibly) Nara-O, Shining Barrator and so forth fall into this category... while it's hard to find anything specifically heroic they've done, if every God was like them then Heaven would run a lot more smoothly than it does now.

There's countless other characters that are basically heroic within the context of their situation, or at least clearly not villainous -- they may not be shining beacons of hope and justice (although some are), but you'd be hard-pressed to call them the 'grey' in black-and-grey morality, either. Blackrose comes to mind. Nazri does, too -- his commitment to avoiding factionalism in favor of, you know, doing his job and protecting Creation from the Fair Folk would be pretty heroic even by our world's standards. The Green Lady is playing an extremely dangerous game for all Creation, but risking her life and sanity in order to beat the Deathlords for good is certainly a hero goal.

There's even an iconic heroic Abyssal, Fallen Wolf of the Cutting Sea -- he only became a Deathknight after succumbing to excruciating torture with the belief that it would give him a chance to eventually kill his Deathlord, and took every possible effort to try and protect his former people afterword, until his master finally exiled him to save face. He's about as heroic as an Abyssal can be, given their condition.

In general, yes, most of these characters have limitations, and it's rare for the really powerful or important people to be purely heroic -- but that's obvious. If Creation was ruled by a wise and just King Arthur who could do everything (and wasn't addicted to World of Warcraft), what would be the need for the player characters?

FatR
2009-02-11, 05:22 AM
FatR, you're taking everything that can be countered in Exalted, and pretending that it can't be countered in DnD. You're taking everything that can be done in DnD, and pretending that it can't be done in Exalted. And you're ignoring literally every single mitigating factor of the problems you present in Exalted, while dismissing every single problem of the things you mention about DnD. For example:
Strawmanning. What can be done in DnD and can't be done in Exalted is interesting combat, becase there is just a handful of competitive builds that play very similarly and tactics (beyond dogpiling) literally are nonexistent.


That's half the POINT of Exalted. Exalted is about being awesome. And in the end, the guy who is more awesome wins.
No. The guy with more patience for describing a countless string of similar-but-not-exactly-same 2-die stunts wins. Face it, humans cannot usually think of more than handful of awesome things per scene, and you need to crank out much more to outlast an opponent with a full defensive kit.
Also, Exalted, as currently written, is about being overshadowed by overpowered elders. You even have special rules to prevent you from leveling the playing field. Sure, you can conquer Unimportania, but this doesn't mean jack on the grand scale. The only reason why Kejack still hadn't forged Lytek and every god who ever opposed him into starmetal ashtrays or why Silver Prince hadn't exterminated every non-Celestial Exalt being in creation in two actions is authors' fiat (or their failure to understand of their own rules, pick whatever you like).


If one guy is just standing there stabbing while the other guy is swinging from a chandalier over to a balcony, which he then jumps off of, landing on a table from which he slices his sword made of Awesome-ite into the torso of his opponent, the boring guy loses.
See above. Also, even if one guy doesn't use stunts (i.e. concedes the fight deliberately, as 2-die stunts, by the rules, is along the lines of saying "my swords slashes the table you stand on in half, as I swing it towards you"), it might take 10+ actions to make him run out of Essence.


You see this as a "flaw" in the system, that people have to be creative. But you ignore the "flaw" in DnD that a lot of times, being creative is worse than just saying "I attack".
You see, the problem with Exalted boils down to that being actually creative, instead of endlessly stringing mandatory flowery descriptions to milk the stunt system for Essence, becomes impossible, once you create an actually powerful character. The universal answer to all creativity, all cool and inventive stull you can come up with is "LOL, SSE". In effect, the combat system limits you exactly to just saying "I attack", except that you must say that in much more words to avoid losing.


What about the earlier comment about the guy wanting to surf down the mountain on a shield? Try that in DnD, it's liable to backfire. Try that in Exalted, you're liable to win because of it.
You're liable to get 4 motes of Essence because of it. That's slightly more than the price of deflecting one extra swing. Also, in Exalted this is liable to backfire too. It is just easier to pump the relevant ability.


You are deliberately misinterpreting the guy's statement with this. Exalted combat is combat just like DnD combat is combat. You assume that the only reason ever to have combat, however, is to kill people and take their and/or their boss's stuff.
No, it is not like DnD at all. Also, if my character fights, yes, he does it to kill people or at least disable them. Kinda makes sense, if you think about it, yes?


Exalted combat isn't about the rewards, it's about the combat itself. It's about people with giant swords pulling insane stunts to decapitate giant robot-hydra gods, not about the +1 Flaming Longsword you get from him afterwards.
Again, in Exalted you certainly do not pull insane stunts to decapitate anything. At Solar level you either push "Win" button or pull stunts to keep yourself alive, while you whittle away enemy's motes. Also, why the heck Exalted has complicated, rules-heavy, optimization-rewarding, concept-punishing combat system, if all that matters are cool descriptions?


You act as though the only purpose of combat is to get where you're going, that it's merely an obstacle to be overcome. But that's not what Exalted is about, it's about being a legend, a superhuman being chosen by the greatest gods in existence, not just being badass. It's about being great, not just being deadly. It's about a shining beacon of the sheer greatness of the sun, moon, stars, life, or death using that power for great things, not just about defeating enemies.

And you refuse to accept that.
Yes, of course. Because the actual freaking mechanics of the game not only fail to support, but actively counter things you talking about. I'm freaking tired of struggling with them at every turn for freaking years so that my game won't blow and won't end in TPK.
Also Exalted is about being a kind of gimp-ass superhuman that will be (at best) limited to slicing people in front of him 7 times per acton for the next 100 years, while his enemies/masters can punch people 80 times per action from the other side of the world, with the fist of instant death. You obviously won't like this, but that's what actual freaking mechanincs say.


You act as though the ST will let this work every time, but won't stand for it in DnD. What makes you so confident that a DnD GM will let a player get away with this any more than an Exalted ST will? If you draw your swords and attack the king, you're going to have bodyguards all over your ass before you can blink in BOTH systems, but you act as though it will only happen in DnD.
I don't understand what you're talking about. Anyway, let me reiterate my position: it is easier to reach godlike, unstoppable, world-changing power in DnD. Yes, you start lower, but you grow faster. By the rules, you can get to lvl 20 in DnD in one year, while getting 500 XP in Exalted takes about 2,5 years (again, by the rules), and a 500 XP character is still way below the level of the true movers and shakers of the setting, even if you put all of this XP into becoming a perfect combat machine (social abilities blow, as it is too easy to negate them, particularly at high Essence). Also, using this power in DnD is actually fun, while in Exalted it is all about "I attack" (except in more words) and, maybe, spamming the same spell to craft an unstoppable army of loyal slaves.


And in DnD, that king is rarely capable of even threatening the players. In Exalted, if you attack the wrong king, you're liable to wind up fighting an unbeatable avatar of elemental fire itself.
See, that's why I say that Exalted is about being a gimp-ass superhuman who is limited to conquering Unimportanias.


Only if the ST wants it this way. A DnD GM can shut down any character at any time, but he doesn't, because that makes things suck for the player. How many discussions have there been about how hard a GM is trying to do the exact opposite, and make one of his players useful? Why do you automatically assume that an Exalted ST won't do the same?
To do this you must struggle with the system about as much as to make a poorly build fighter useful in a party of Batman wizards and CoDzillas.

Aquillion
2009-02-11, 05:50 AM
I don't understand what you're talking about. Anyway, let me reiterate my position: it is easier to reach godlike, unstoppable, world-changing power in DnD. Yes, you start lower, but you grow faster. By the rules, you can get to lvl 20 in DnD in one year, while getting 500 XP in Exalted takes about 2,5 years (again, by the rules), and a 500 XP character is still way below the level of the true movers and shakers of the setting, even if you put all of this XP into becoming a perfect combat machine (social abilities blow, as it is too easy to negate them, particularly at high Essence). Also, using this power in DnD is actually fun, while in Exalted it is all about "I attack" (except in more words) and, maybe, spamming the same spell to craft an unstoppable army of loyal slaves.Um? Social abilities are only easy to negate if you use them stupidly. Obviously convincing the head of the Bronze Faction Solars to reverse a position that he's held for 1500 years is going to be rather difficult... but you don't have to do that. He (and just about all the big 'movers and shakers') are bound by the rules to some extent, by the balance of powers, by countless other things. If the Sidereals do too much, the rest of Heaven (much of which, remember, distrusts them and many of which favor the Solars at least implicitly) smacks them down. If the Deathlords get out of line, other Deathlords will take the opportunity to stab them in the back. The Fair Folk are sharply limited in Creation. Only Solars are free to act with more or less a free hand in the more wild areas.

And Solars can accomplish a lot there. Convincing a nation to follow you is not particularly difficult -- again, not so easy as, say, convincing the Realm to follow you, but you don't need them. Even the entry-level Solar Bureaucracy and Teaching charms can turn a disorganized and small nation into a peerless model of efficiency and education. Doing this is going to attract enemies, yes... but it will also attract friends.

Oh, and Solars don't have to take the slow route. Solars are supposed to use allies intelligently, too. Once you've attracted the eye of friendly gods, Lytek can immensely accelerate the rate at which you increase your essence (breaking the usual limits) by granting you memories of past lives or of training sessions from the Primordial war (you know, the ones that instantly turned newly-exalted Solars into forces capable of challenging the Primordials.) He can also tell you about and help you rediscover any charm that any Exalted has ever possessed, including secret ones they never revealed to anyone else... and his primary motivation is "making every Exalted as awesome as possible", so all you have to do is reach his office and ask nicely. Ghataru can grant you command over the Aerial Legion. You may have to use social combat against these people to an extent, but they're not going to negate it out of hand, because they want to be convinced. You don't have to start by convincing the Silver Prince to surrender (although if you could manage to start a dialog with Princess Magnificent, she might be willing to turn with minimal Social Combat, too, if only because it would annoy the First and Forsaken Lion.) Social combat doesn't have to be used for obvious things like that, either -- it doesn't take much to convince the First and Forsaken Lion to take a chance at stabbing the Silver Prince in the back, so a single well-written letter with a social attack in it that reaches him might work. Sure, he'll know you're trying to convince him -- but it's something he's eager to be convinced of anyway. Social combat isn't like waving a sword around. Unless you have a captive prisoner or a grossly disproportionate situation, you have to use it intelligently, to convince people to do things they were at least considering before.

And that's not even getting into sorcery. Demon Summoning has been touched on, but in many ways Imbue Amalgam is even more powerful; it can create you limitless numbers of permanent servants, completely and supernaturally loyal, with superhuman stats, Solar charms (!), and even Terrestrial-Circle Sorcery. It requires a Resource 4 statue, but a resourceful Solar can get their hands on those in large numbers when necessary, especially once they've gotten the ball rolling. Beyond that it just requires essence, with no commitment requirement (and a willing mortal, something that any Solar with any social capabilities can obtain in limitless numbers -- especially since you are basically giving this mortal massive power, beyond even a typical Dragon-Blooded, in exchange for loyalty to you.)

Now, granted, these Amalgams have to be used smartly, too -- they go back to being normal if hit with Sapphire Countermagic or higher -- but Sidereals can't go around throwing Sapphire Countermagic regularly in creation, Deathlords only have a few servants capable of doing that, there are at most two hundred Abyssals + Sidereals total (many of which won't have Sapphire Circle magic) and you can create as many Amalgams as you want. Notice that Sapphire Countermagic is both noisy, takes a long time, and will negate only a single Amalgam at a time -- good luck doing that in combat. Anyone who wants to try and fight will have the joy of being swarmed by dozens or even hundreds of admittedly low-essence, decently-statted creatures armed with Solar charms.

And you don't just have to use them in combat (although they are a rather big win button against anything that lacks truly absurd capabilities). You can use them to run and administer your realm. You can even base your realm around them -- sure, the Immaculate Faith offers reincarnation as a Dragon-Blooded to mortals. You offer more power than a Dragon-Blood -- right here and now, in their current life. It doesn't take a genius to figure out which philosophy will win out.

Even if the Sidereals want to fight back (and, remember, they have limitations -- many people in Heaven might frown on them creating their own personal semi-Exalted in large numbers), they can't grant Solar charms (and most of the best Sidereal charms probably won't work for Amalgams anyway, since they have no standing in Bureau of Destiny -- in fact, it'd probably get the Sidereal in question in massive trouble if it was found out.) You can grant any charm your circle's Eclipse Caste Solar can learn, so your Amalgams will be better. Even if the Deathlords want to try the same trick, they aren't going to be able to get willing mortals as easily, or grant them charms that are as useful in Creation -- and the other Deathlords will stab them in the back the instant they notice a new sort of army being created. Only the Solars have the freedom and power to use tricks like this to their full extent.

Iethloc
2009-02-11, 05:58 AM
A combat-optimized starting character in Exalted is about CR 15. I compared a bunch of the mechanics between Exalted and D&D and came to the conclusion that 2 dice (beyond a base of 2 dice that replaces the d20) equals about a +5 in D&D, therefore an attack pool of 16 is an attack pool of the usual 1d20 plus 35. Do you know how many of my combat-based starting characters have attack pools of 16 or more? All of them.

And in Exalted, not every king is ultra-powerful, and when they are, you can usually tell. In fact, for a subversion, in an Exalted campaign I played in some time ago, I thought the Perfect of Paragon was a God. He had everything under control, had all the necessary skills, and had managed to not get assassinated. All the classic signs of either a God, or, less likely, an Exalt (if he were a Dragon-Blood, we'd know).

Well, I assassinated him. With a combo of Blazing Solar Bolt, Fire and Stones Strike, Hungry Tiger Technique and Thunderbolt Attack Prana...with a Solar combat monster. He was a normal (and unarmored) human all along...well, not after 88 post-soak damage.


As for interesting builds? Over the time I've played Exalted, I have built these viable combat builds:

1. A viking who rides a white tiger and wields a giant golden axe, running into combat shouting in fury...unarmored. Also, he later got sent 100 years into the future and at one point turned into a living whirlwind without using any charms or other magic, fueled only by sheer awesomeness. I think that was my first 3-die stunt.

2. A manipulative, level-headed Martial Artist who wielded an 8-sectioned staff accompanied by the god of said staff.

3. An undead mad scientist who builds increasingly large and powerful machines of death out of bones, iron and distilled Awesomeness, accompanied by a heavily mutated man made of ever-regenerating crystal.

4. A Lunar whose totem is a poison dart frog who can drink any poison he wants and forevermore be able to spit that poison.

5. The God of Slaughter, who wields razor claws and adopts the form of a massive, blood-soaked tiger when he needs to be stealthy...and succeeds at it. He destroyed an entire branch the Immaculate Order as part of a deal, and would've gone on to the rest of it if the person he was dealing with did not turn out to be an awakened Neverborn.

6. Another undead monstrosity, this time with 13 chains growing out of his back, worshiped out of sheer terror by a huge number of mortals. Wherever he is, he decides who lives or dies, and when he doesn't want to be seen, he is not seen.

7. A face-blind necromancer (an Abyssal like the other two undead guys here) who occasionally fought for the greater good, accompanied by the grim reaper.

Each and every one of these guys could level a well-defended city while blindfolded and on fire (haven't actually gotten a chance to do that yet). None of them ever fought in the same manner or even ever used the same charms, aside from Excellencies.

Also, with said manipulative martial artist, I once got 4 3-die stunts in ONE SESSION, each in a completely different situation (escaping a collapsing cave, shutting up a party member, and two others I don't remember off the top of my head). We ended up riding on a stone rollercoaster because I stunted well enough to extend Duck Fate to THE ENTIRE PARTY. That was an AWESOME session!

That undead scientist? He built an engine of war known as Uller. You know the Mask of Winter's war machine Juggernaut? Uller could tear Juggernaut in half. But instead, Uller destroyed another priceless artifact of war and conquered a city...defended by all of a living Primordial's souls and the largest army of mortals ever seen since the first age. They all died.


These all involved epic stunts and tasks (and some optimization and experience, of course), none of which could be replicated with D&D without a LOT of Rule 0. Uller didn't even have any homebrewing involved - just good ol' fashion taking the rules farther than what is necessary.

And that is what Exalted is about.

Aquillion
2009-02-11, 06:31 AM
The point is, though: You're not supposed to be able to beat the Big Bads (or 'Big Neutrals') of the setting purely by grinding experience points, increasing your stats, and learning new charms. Exalted is neither D&D nor WoW. Yes, the Deathlords will kick your ass if you try that.

But Exalted is supposed to be an epic setting. You don't just train in a dojo for twenty years, then beat up the First and Forsaken Lion -- that's not very epic at all. You go on an extended quest to discover his one weakness, or to find a five-dot or N/A artifact that can beat him. You research ancient lore to discover a way to increase your power more quickly, or seek the help of powerful allies (like, as I mentioned, Lytek, who can break the time limits on increasing your Essence, and will be positively eager to do this, especially if you intend to use it to beat up Abyssals -- who he considers a personal affront -- or to punch Chejop Kejak in the face. Not that I'm suggesting that that alone would be enough to let you do that, mind, but it'd be a decent start.)

Social attacks can be used in even more indirect ways, too. I mentioned the three minor gods who defeated The Princess Magnificent with Lips of Coral and Robes of Black Feathers -- she was not (at least, before they beat her) considered one of the weakest Deathlords by any means, but they defeated her using nothing but rumors and storytelling. Social attacks aren't just about using die rolls; they're about learning what your enemy (or your potential ally) really wants, really hopes for, really fears or hates. Those things are levers that can, at the very least, get them to start listening, and can be used against them later on. A typical Deathknight would likely attack instantly if you simply demanded that they surrender -- but if you begin by feigning some sort of social or ideological weakness, enough to make them think that they might be able to use it against you and turn you for their master? They'll be eager to talk and negotiate and argue.

Or, if you can get control of the Realm's defense systems, anyone can rule Creation -- the Scarlet Empress proved that once already, and a Solar (assuming they can reach there, which is an epic feat of stealth but nowhere near impossible) has far more relevant resources for that than she ever did, ranging from the fact that the machines were probably designed for Solars down to possibly even possessing memories of using them in a previous life. Sure, lots of Sidereals will be really, really unhappy over this, and the Immaculate Order will be even less happy, but the fun thing about being in control of the most powerful weapon system in Creation is that you don't have to give a damn... and it will, incidentally, let you project your image anywhere or everywhere in the Realm at once, letting you make Social attacks against the entire world, from a safe position where nobody can prevent you. The fact that the 'movers and shakers' of the world will resist is not going to help them much once you've talked everyone else in the Realm over to your side.

Yes, Exalted provides some characters that seem, at first glance, to be absurdly beyond what the players could reasonably defeat. This is deliberate. It makes it more epic when you find a way to, eventually, defeat them.

FatR
2009-02-11, 06:54 AM
Um? Social abilities are only easy to negate if you use them stupidly. Obviously convincing the head of the Bronze Faction Solars to reverse a position that he's held for 1500 years is going to be rather difficult... but you don't have to do that. He (and just about all the big 'movers and shakers') are bound by the rules to some extent, by the balance of powers, by countless other things. If the Sidereals do too much, the rest of Heaven (much of which, remember, distrusts them and many of which favor the Solars at least implicitly) smacks them down.
The rest of Heaven can't do jack, unless you pretty much ignore what statblocks say about the power level of elders. As I said, Kejack can forge them all into a mother of all ashtrays as a morning workout. Even Green Lady, who is supposed to be significantly weaker, can take on every god with an existing statblock in the world and effortlessly win, because her Obsidian Shards of Infinite Brokenation style trumps all spirit Charms so completely that it is not even funny. Again, they (and also Deathords, maybe also Third Circle demons) play Dragonball Z while the rest of the world plays Dynasty Warriors.
As about social abilities. Without direct mindscrew Charms you cannot convince any character, who is not your prisoner, of anything, unless the Storytellers takes pity on you. With mindscrew Charms you just cannot convince any character of importance, because they have perfect social defenses and always can just beat you up in response.


If the Deathlords get out of line, other Deathlords will take the opportunity to stab them in the back.
Except, they never did that to MoW and they won't do that because no one else wishes to be put in an unremovable armor that doubles as an iron maiden.


And Solars can accomplish a lot there. Convincing a nation to follow you is not particularly difficult -- again, not so easy as, say, convincing the Realm to follow you, but you don't need them.
Uh, as I said, you can conquer Unimportania. Only, does it matter?


Even the entry-level Solar Bureaucracy and Teaching charms can turn a disorganized and small nation into a peerless model of efficiency and education.
No, it doesn't. No number of mortals can ever matter, therefore, who cares if your nation is Utopia, you're still in square one. Stop fooling around and start making amalgams, already. You don't need social stuff for that.


Oh, and Solars don't have to take the slow route. Solars are supposed to use allies intelligently, too. Once you've attracted the eye of friendly gods, Lytek can accelerate the rate at which you increase your essence by granting you memories of past lives.
Even if he now can (I didn't read recent 2E books and don't intend to), it is a bit difficult to do so, while he's a starmetal ashtray.


Ghataru can grant you command over the Aerial Legion.
Which Kejack or Silver Prince likely can wipe out in a single action.


You may have to use social combat against these people to an extent, but they're not going to negate it out of hand, because they want to be convinced.
See, that's not you being good at anything, that's authors stacking odds in favor of one particular type of Exalted. Except that still doesn't matter, because they don't seem to realize how uber-godlike-powerful are their Big Bads.


You don't have to start by convincing the Silver Prince to surrender (although if you could manage to start a dialog with Princess Magnificent, she might be willing to turn with minimal Social Combat, too, if only because it would annoy the First and Forsaken Lion.) Social combat doesn't have to be used for obvious things like that, either -- it doesn't take much to convince the First and Forsaken Lion to take a chance at stabbing the Silver Prince in the back, so a single well-written letter with a social attack in it that reaches him might work.
No. It might not and will not. Unless you forget that he has superhuman intelligence and defensive social Charms to detect and perfectly negate your attack. He also knows better than to screw with other Deathlords' plans again.


Sure, he'll know you're trying to convince him -- but it's something he's eager to be convinced of anyway. Social combat isn't like waving a sword around. Unless you have a captive prisoner or a grossly disproportionate situation, you have to use it intelligently, to convince people to do things they were at least considering before.
That's why the social stuff is strictly worse than stabbing people with your dailkave. Stabbing actually works on all those people who hate you and have power to hurt you. Social combat, by your own words, only works if the plot allows it to work.


And that's not even getting into sorcery. Demon Summoning has been touched on, but in many ways Imbue Amalgam is even more powerful; it can create you limitless numbers of permanent servants, completely and supernaturally loyal, with superhuman stats, Solar charms (!), and even Terrestrial-Circle Sorcery.
And this is one of the main reasons, why I just don't care about social stuff. Amalgams are enormously superior in every way to servants you can actually obtain with actual use of social Charms, as opposed to allies you gain through plot development. So, just make them, insted of investing tons of XP in Charms that are entirely negated by Join Battle.
Unfortunately, NPCs can field amalgam armies of their own, and numbers cannot counter Essence disparity anyway, so it is not like this would help you to survive against any of the bigshots.

As a side note, I perfectly understand, that some characters prefer to solve things in a compassionate way, instead of an effective way, and to seek compromises, instead of subjugating everything in their path. To them social stuff is mandatory. This doesn't change the fact that social stuff doesn't even work without Storyteller's fiat, which raises the question: why the heck we need a complicated system for it in the first place? If you cannot convince any important people, but those who want to be convinced, all XP you sunk in Social trees is, frankly, wasted.


Even if the Sidereals want to fight back
If they want to fight back, they punch you and your entire army at once a couple dozen times per action with no-save-you-die Charm. Game over. Yes, I don't like this too and that's why I stopped reading 2E. But this what the mechanics and statblocks say.


The point is, though: You're not supposed to be able to beat the Big Bads (or 'Big Neutrals') of the setting purely by grinding experience points, increasing your stats, and learning new charms. Exalted is neither D&D nor WoW. Yes, the Deathlords will kick your ass if you try that.
Thanks for supporting my point about Exalted PCs being gimp-ass superhumans. If the game doesn't give you an ability to actually defeat not just some distant god-figures, but your main freaking enemies with your own power, it fails at "heroic" parts of "heroic fantasy" for me, and also fails at epicness. Cuchulainn, Arjuna and other epic heroes were kicking ass, instead of setting their enemies against each other or spending 95% of their time searching for McGuffins, the last time I checked.

FatR
2009-02-11, 07:05 AM
A combat-optimized starting character in Exalted is about CR 15.
Wrong. It is about CR 5-7. An equvalent to Dex 5, Melee 5 (your skill contributes to your ability to hit people exactly as much as maximum normal muscle potential) is Str 18, BAB +4 (your skill contributes to your ability to hit people exactly as much as maximum normal muscle potential). +1 is slightly better than a die in Exalted. The rest of the calculations are similarly wrong.

This is also reflected in actual play. In Exalted, starting characters usually find themselves unable to one-shot even the weakest of mortal mooks, without or even with wasting resources, unless they specialze in some big, damaging weapon.


As for interesting builds? Over the time I've played Exalted, I have built these viable combat builds:
I totally doubt ''viable'' part. Being able to kill a lot of mortals doesn't make you viable. Being in the same league as your peers does. Comparing with DnD again, it is hard not to have ability to waste NI number of CR -4 and lower opponents, but this doesn't insure you from sucking in comparison to appropriate CR threats.

horseboy
2009-02-11, 07:44 AM
But what kind of plotline can accomodate characters like that?! That'd be like having the Fellowship barrel into Mordor and beat up Sauron! There's no excitement, no drama. Just awesomeness. Awesomeness is like Tabasco sauce. Just a little bit really adds some pizazz to that burrito. Too much, and you burn your mouth.
Granted I haven't played Exalted, but I have done several Elysium (Elder Vampires) chronicles. Where every one has Marble Skin (Immune to staking and stupid amounts of DR) 6-8 in Potence(super strength), Celerity (Super speed) and Fortitude (Super invulnerability). You don't challenge them in martially. You challenge them in things like subtlety. You maneuver your puppet government in back the puppet government of enemy A so he owe's you one. Then put on your wizard hat and beard and hire a bunch of noobs to throw themselves against enemy B's lieutenant to check their defenses (bonus points they actually succeed). Then frame Enemy C for being the one who actually attacked enemy A. Or you put them in a purely subjective thing, like ye ol' Love Triangle. So for a paladin, you might use your powers to go through, save a few towns, and sway them into believing that you are capable of making life tolerable, or even how to take charge of their own lives and live free. Then they spread the message, while you fix the irrigation system and lay down a just and fair legal system and start taking over surrounding areas with culture kinda like in Civilization.

Also, I can't remember his name now, but there was this guy who bounced back and forth between FASA and WW. In his spare time he did this amazing game called Whispering Vault. One thing FASA always did VERY well was setting. I'm seeing his dirty little paw prints all over the back story. Should be worth reading just so you can see what a setting is for.

Morty
2009-02-11, 07:58 AM
Whoa. This thread sure moves fast. Well, so far it looks that apart from being sadly completely not for my taste, and I'm not just talking about the power level here, Exalted is a well-done system. And that bickering about rules isn't reserved for D&D by any means.

Aquillion
2009-02-11, 07:59 AM
The rest of Heaven can't do jack, unless you pretty much ignore what statblocks say about the power level of elders. As I said, Kejack can forge them all into a mother of all ashtrays as a morning workout. Even Green Lady, who is supposed to be significantly weaker, can take on every god with an existing statblock in the world and effortlessly win, because her Obsidian Shards of Infinite Brokenation style trumps all spirit Charms so completely that it is not even funny. Again, they (and also Deathords, maybe also Third Circle demons) play Dragonball Z while the rest of the world plays Dynasty Warriors.
As about social abilities. Without direct mindscrew Charms you cannot convince any character, who is not your prisoner, of anything, unless the Storytellers takes pity on you. With mindscrew Charms you just cannot convince any character of importance, because they have perfect social defenses and always can just beat you up in response.Uh. If Kejack did that, he would throw Creation into worse straits than the Solar Exalted he overthrew ever would have. And if he really wants to destroy creation as badly as would happen if he started killing Celestial gods on that scale, he doesn't need to use any fancy tricks, he can just take an axe to the Loom of Destiny and call it a day. He doesn't want to do that.

And there are still forces that can reign him in. He goes that badly berserk or gets too far out of line to the point of threatening creation itself (killing multiple high-essence gods would certainly qualify), and Asna Firstborn snips him out of creation (something he doesn't even know she can do, so he can't defend against it -- and something that won't, obviously, be in the loom in advance. Even if he knew, what's he going to do? Kill Asna Firstborn? Yeah, I'm sure the Pattern Spiders will love that -- will he kill them, too?) Likewise, while the Incarnae may be engrossed in the games, they do pop their heads out occasionally -- and they're going to notice and start to ask pointed questions if there is an all-out war with multiple high-essence Gods dying on their doorstep. The gods who would start to go after Kejack's head if he actually killed Lytek are, in particular, the top-ranking few ones who still communicate with the Incarnae regularly -- in other words, killing them is one of the few things you can't do without eventually risking Incarnae attention. Yeah, sure, they're engrossed in the games, but they also need an orderly Heaven, at the very least, in order to keep playing them.

If Kejack did something like you're describing, he'd be indirectly getting in the way of the Games themselves, and that's the one guaranteed way to still get their attention. I do not think any combo, no matter how stuffed with cheese, is likely to help him much once the Unconquered Sun starts asking who is making all the noise while he's trying to take his turn.

You're also making a mistake by assuming you can only trust the statblocks. Exalted does not work that way. Statblocks are given for people and things the players are likely to fight (or want to fight, but it would cause problems if they did). The splatbooks also say that things work a certain way, and provide loose and undefined forces for the Storyteller to use to ensure that they work that way. For the Sidereals, Oversight is specifically-described by the books as being undefined so that it can be used in this way -- the setting is such that the Sidereals can never, ever, get completely out of hand en masse, and Oversight ensures this. No matter what tricks Kejack uses, Oversight smacks him down with their stick of +1 plotness (or, more specifically, they don't, because he's not stupid enough to do it in the first place.) If it comes down to it, the Bureau of Endings is still perfectly empowered to have him die instantly, and the usual paperwork required for that would probably be drastically shortened if he was currently running around murdering Gods in cold blood.

The authors know perfectly well that even higher-rank gods can be beaten up, but that's why they put things like Oversight in the story. Those are the reason why the last time the Sidereals beat up Lytek, they had to break the stars themselves to avoid punishment. Unless they're planning on breaking the Mask again, beating up Gods isn't likely to be a viable strategy.

And any tricks he (or the Deathlords) can pull, a determined circle of Solars with an Eclipse Caste in it can learn the component charms and martial art techniques for, too -- and then grant them to unlimited high-essence Amalgams. Numbers do become important when you're talking about NI Amalgams armed with all the exact same tricks you were planning on using yourself.

They don't need to use social influence on him, they just need to learn about what they need from the right allies, then find someone (anyone) in Creation who knows the right tricks and can be convinced in some fashion or another to give them up. For instance, Lytek is the best friend the Solars have in heaven, and can help you learn anything if the Exaltation of anyone who ever knew it has passed through his office. (Hint: It has.)

Also note that this is Exalted, not D&D; inventing new Charms is a central part of the game, and a big part of the advantage Solars have over Sidereals. There is no such thing as a "perfect combo", because as soon as anyone learns about it they can make a "negate that overpowered trick that Kejack just used to beat up my army" charm to cancel it out.


No, it doesn't. No number of mortals can ever matter, therefore, who cares if your nation is Utopia, you're still in square one. Stop fooling around and start making amalgams, already. You don't need social stuff for that.It does matter, because there are people out there who think it matters. You start doing good things in the world, and various people (and gods) who matter in Heaven and Earth will start to come to your side. If you attract enough of them, anyone who isn't willing to smash Creation entirely to win will eventually support you.


Which Kejack or Silver Prince likely can wipe out in a single action.They can't, because the Aerial legion isn't statted out anywhere -- but it is described as powerful enough for Kejack to be worried about it, and, therefore, he can't wipe it out in a single action (even if he could do so without being snipped out of creation by Asna Firstborn or whatever); and, therefore, the Silver Prince probably can't, either.



See, that's not you being good at anything, that's authors stacking odds in favor of one particular type of Exalted. Except that still doesn't matter, because they don't seem to realize how uber-godlike-powerful are their Big Bads.Stacking the odds in favor of the Solar Exalted is the whole point of being Solar Exalted. :smallbiggrin:


That's why the social stuff is strictly worse than stabbing people with your dailkave. Stabbing actually works on all those people who hate you and have power to hurt you. Social combat, by your own words, only works if the plot allows it to work.Stabbing people with your daiklave only works if the plot allows it to work, too. An enemy with no social or psychological weaknesses is no different from an enemy with no physical weaknesses -- having everything you say bounce off to no effect is no different from having daiklaves bounce off to no effect.


And this is one of the main reasons, why I just don't care about social stuff. Amalgams are enormously superior in every way to servants you can actually obtain with actual use of social Charms, as opposed to allies you gain through plot development. So, just make them, insted of investing tons of XP in Charms that are entirely negated by Join Battle.
Unfortunately, NPCs can field amalgam armies of their own, and numbers cannot counter Essence disparity anyway, so it is not like this would help you to survive against any of the bigshots.Except that my Amalgams can (at least in theory) be equipped with any charm or form of martial arts ever possessed by any Celestial Exalt who ever lived. Theirs can only be equipped with the limited pool they have available from one specific Exalt -- an old one, yes, but Lytek has access to the details on all their charms and many, many more (and no, the Deathlords probably can't go ask Lytek to help them with this part.) Therefore, if it really comes down to an obscure cheesefight, I can make better Amalgams and win.


As a side note, I perfectly understand, that some characters prefer to solve things in a compassionate way, instead of an effective way, and to seek compromises, instead of subjugating everything in their path. To them social stuff is mandatory. This doesn't change the fact that social stuff doesn't even work without Storyteller's fiat, which raises the question: why the heck we need a complicated system for it in the first place? If you cannot convince any important people, but those who want to be convinced, all XP you sunk in Social trees is, frankly, wasted.By that definition, the fact that your swords don't magically bounce off of every enemy you encounter is, yes, also Storyteller's fiat. Characters have things they care about and motivations that can be understood or exploited in in the same way that they are subject to damage; in Exalted, DM-fiating away one is no different from DM-fiating away the other.


If they want to fight back, they punch you and your entire army at once a couple dozen times per action with no-save-you-die Charm. Game over. Yes, I don't like this too and that's why I stopped reading 2E. But this what the mechanics and statblocks say.No, because if I'm really playing with a Storyteller bad enough to use that against me, I just build an army of Amalgams with equally cheesy combos capable of perfect-defending every one of those attacks and then hitting them right back.

(Also note that Air Dragon's Sight, the usual component of the sort of tricks you're talking about, fails to work when you're "so beset by foes that you cannot avoid the blows", which my army of Amalgams equipped with the best charms ever used in the history of ever would certainly be able to manage.)


Thanks for supporting my point about Exalted PCs being gimp-ass superhumans. If the game doesn't give you an ability to actually defeat not just some distant god-figures, but your main freaking enemies with your own power, it fails at "heroic" parts of "heroic fantasy" for me, and also fails at epicness. Cuchulainn, Arjuna and other epic heroes were kicking ass, instead of setting their enemies against each other or spending 95% of their time searching for McGuffins, the last time I checked.Uh? The Deathlords and the chief Sidereals are the equivalent distant God-Figures (ok, in the typical fantasy organization the Deathlords are closer to "king" figures while the Neverborn are the "God" figures -- but it's the same thing; you're not supposed to immediately march in and challenge them directly.)

Your typical starting Exalted likely will not know that either of those exist (and will often not know that the Sidereals exist at all.) An Exalted who doesn't start near a Shadowland might not even know that the Abyssals exist -- they're not widely-known yet. Depending on where you are, you could adventure for years without ever attracting either of their attentions -- they're both pretty busy right now, too busy to march in and slaughter random Solars. Neither of them are likely to give your players serious attention until/unless they've really started to stand out from other Solars, while the Solars themselves could take quite a while to figure out who such enemies are, especially if focused on other things. (Note that in the intervening time it is quite possible that Kejack could die of old age -- something that is specifically described as about to happen soon.)

Cúchulainn had magic horses granted by the gods. He sought allies who taught him secret techniques known only to them and him. In order to kill Cú Roí, he has to discover his secret weakness, and in order to beat Aífe he uses his knowledge of the only two things she loved. Arjuna had friggin Krishna for a charioteer. Yeah, I could beat the First and Forsaken Lion, too, if I had the Unconquered Sun driving my chariot. :smalltongue:

Very few heroic epics are just "and then he beat up the enemy because he was massively strong." There is usually some sort of quest to earn or attain the necessary power -- simply training in a mortal fashion (even with heroic or Exalted capacity for learning) is not enough. You need supernatural allies, or secret techniques, or peerless weapons granted by the gods themselves, or the knowledge of the one weak point in the dark knight's armor, or any of countless other things.

Killersquid
2009-02-11, 09:35 AM
Oh hey, PbP any time, if we could get a storyteller, I know I can get a few players up, its just that one last bit thats the problem. We've got an game on going here, the first i've ever seen for 1st ed, done by Nova. So if your interesed in joining that one its a slow mover but so far its been pretty neat. I can PM you a link to the game if you'd lile, but honestly getting more then one game going on these boards would not be a bad thing at all.

I myself am ST'ing a game for some friends over RPOL along side a Vampire game, so STing is sadly out as the Exalted game has 3 different groups running in the same story.

Sorry this is late, but I have to pass as I don't have the 1e books. Thank you though.

And now, for your regularly on topic program.

Oslecamo
2009-02-11, 10:33 AM
Very few heroic epics are just "and then he beat up the enemy because he was massively strong." There is usually some sort of quest to earn or attain the necessary power -- simply training in a mortal fashion (even with heroic or Exalted capacity for learning) is not enough. You need supernatural allies, or secret techniques, or peerless weapons granted by the gods themselves, or the knowledge of the one weak point in the dark knight's armor, or any of countless other things.

Agreed. It really doesn't feel very heroic to beat up someone who's clearly weaker than you.

Heros are the guys who go against the odds in situations where other people would find it more reasonable to simply give up or change to the other side. Even when the situation seems hopeless, they work hard to find a way to turn it around.

Or are just damn lucky and just happen to be the last person standing when the dust settles.

Artanis
2009-02-11, 10:44 AM
Strawmanning. What can be done in DnD and can't be done in Exalted is interesting combat, becase there is just a handful of competitive builds that play very similarly and tactics (beyond dogpiling) literally are nonexistent.
Your definition of "interesting" isn't the only one. One of the things I consider interesting is vivid descriptions of what's going on. My group, for example, even uses stunt-level descriptions for stuff in our current 4e DnD campaign.

In DnD, you can get by with "I attack" every. Single. Round. That's not very interesting.



No. The guy with more patience for describing a countless string of similar-but-not-exactly-same 2-die stunts wins. Face it, humans cannot usually think of more than handful of awesome things per scene, and you need to crank out much more to outlast an opponent with a full defensive kit.
That's why you try to think up stunts in between sessions :smallwink:


Also, Exalted, as currently written, is about being overshadowed by overpowered elders. You even have special rules to prevent you from leveling the playing field. Sure, you can conquer Unimportania, but this doesn't mean jack on the grand scale. The only reason why Kejack still hadn't forged Lytek and every god who ever opposed him into starmetal ashtrays or why Silver Prince hadn't exterminated every non-Celestial Exalt being in creation in two actions is authors' fiat (or their failure to understand of their own rules, pick whatever you like).
Yeah, and the Tarrasque is held at bay by...what, exactly?



See above. Also, even if one guy doesn't use stunts (i.e. concedes the fight deliberately, as 2-die stunts, by the rules, is along the lines of saying "my swords slashes the table you stand on in half, as I swing it towards you"), it might take 10+ actions to make him run out of Essence.
Depends on the ST. I've had an ST who wouldn't give us a single die for that.


You see, the problem with Exalted boils down to that being actually creative, instead of endlessly stringing mandatory flowery descriptions to milk the stunt system for Essence, becomes impossible, once you create an actually powerful character. The universal answer to all creativity, all cool and inventive stull you can come up with is "LOL, SSE". In effect, the combat system limits you exactly to just saying "I attack", except that you must say that in much more words to avoid losing.
As opposed to saying "I attack" in exactly that many words. Every. Single. Time.


You're liable to get 4 motes of Essence because of it. That's slightly more than the price of deflecting one extra swing. Also, in Exalted this is liable to backfire too. It is just easier to pump the relevant ability.
Exalted comes out and tells you to reward that sort of thing. Not just a stunt bonus, either. Exalted is about doing cool stuff, and if you do something cool like that, the ST is advised to find some way of helping that along.


No, it is not like DnD at all. Also, if my character fights, yes, he does it to kill people or at least disable them. Kinda makes sense, if you think about it, yes?
You deliberatly misinterpret my statement.

DnD combat is combat.
Exalted combat is combat.
Thus combat in each system is still combat, regardless of any other differences, whether you like it or not.


Again, in Exalted you certainly do not pull insane stunts to decapitate anything. At Solar level you either push "Win" button or pull stunts to keep yourself alive, while you whittle away enemy's motes. Also, why the heck Exalted has complicated, rules-heavy, optimization-rewarding, concept-punishing combat system, if all that matters are cool descriptions?
You only look at it that way if you're missing the point of Exalted. Exalted isn't about winning the game, it's about doing cool stuff. It comes out and says it's about doing cool stuff.



Yes, of course. Because the actual freaking mechanics of the game not only fail to support, but actively counter things you talking about. I'm freaking tired of struggling with them at every turn for freaking years so that my game won't blow and won't end in TPK.
Also Exalted is about being a kind of gimp-ass superhuman that will be (at best) limited to slicing people in front of him 7 times per acton for the next 100 years, while his enemies/masters can punch people 80 times per action from the other side of the world, with the fist of instant death. You obviously won't like this, but that's what actual freaking mechanincs say.
Because killing one person per second is soooooo gimp.

You're comparing relatively young Exalts with the most powerful beings creation has ever seen. Try comparing an Exalt with a human. Or hell, just comparing a Solar with an equal-Essence DB for once.


I don't understand what you're talking about. Anyway, let me reiterate my position: it is easier to reach godlike, unstoppable, world-changing power in DnD. Yes, you start lower, but you grow faster. By the rules, you can get to lvl 20 in DnD in one year, while getting 500 XP in Exalted takes about 2,5 years (again, by the rules), and a 500 XP character is still way below the level of the true movers and shakers of the setting, even if you put all of this XP into becoming a perfect combat machine (social abilities blow, as it is too easy to negate them, particularly at high Essence). Also, using this power in DnD is actually fun, while in Exalted it is all about "I attack" (except in more words) and, maybe, spamming the same spell to craft an unstoppable army of loyal slaves.
It being more fun is your opinion. It being easier is a matter of how fast your ST/GM gives you XP.


See, that's why I say that Exalted is about being a gimp-ass superhuman who is limited to conquering Unimportanias.
Yes, it takes a real gimp to get his ass kicked by King Essence Seven Fire Aspect.


To do this you must struggle with the system about as much as to make a poorly build fighter useful in a party of Batman wizards and CoDzillas.
And yet you don't seem to hold that against DnD.




/ignore

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 11:04 AM
Granted I haven't played Exalted, but I have done several Elysium (Elder Vampires) chronicles. Where every one has Marble Skin (Immune to staking and stupid amounts of DR) 6-8 in Potence(super strength), Celerity (Super speed) and Fortitude (Super invulnerability). You don't challenge them in martially. You challenge them in things like subtlety. You maneuver your puppet government in back the puppet government of enemy A so he owe's you one. Then put on your wizard hat and beard and hire a bunch of noobs to throw themselves against enemy B's lieutenant to check their defenses (bonus points they actually succeed). Then frame Enemy C for being the one who actually attacked enemy A. Or you put them in a purely subjective thing, like ye ol' Love Triangle. So for a paladin, you might use your powers to go through, save a few towns, and sway them into believing that you are capable of making life tolerable, or even how to take charge of their own lives and live free. Then they spread the message, while you fix the irrigation system and lay down a just and fair legal system and start taking over surrounding areas with culture kinda like in Civilization.

Also, I can't remember his name now, but there was this guy who bounced back and forth between FASA and WW. In his spare time he did this amazing game called Whispering Vault. One thing FASA always did VERY well was setting. I'm seeing his dirty little paw prints all over the back story. Should be worth reading just so you can see what a setting is for.

Sounds pretty slick. And it gives an opportunity for a paladin to do something more than just "SMITE EVIL!" ad nauseum.

Not really understanding all this rules talk though.

And who's this Kejack guy?

Artanis
2009-02-11, 11:31 AM
Chejop Kejak, the top dog among Sidereal Exalted. He was part of The Usurpation that overthrew the Solars a looooong long time ago, and he's currently the head of the Bronze Faction, which supports sticking with The Realm and keeping the Solars from coming back (as opposed to the Gold Faction, which supports the opposite).

He's pretty much the single most powerful Exalt anywhere. There are virtually zero Exalts with his level of personal power, and those few that can match him don't have his ridiculous amounts of clout in Heaven. Luckily for the Solars, he's a little* too busy to come down and kick their asses in person.


*By this I mean he's virtually overseeing the people who keep fate itself working properly, with 1/7 the manpower they're supposed to have.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 11:51 AM
Oh, so he's like the Chuck Norris of Exalted?

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 12:38 PM
Naw, think bigger. Kejack could stomp Norris into the ground.

And I see we're back on the combat aspect again

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 01:14 PM
I see. What are the naming conventions in Exalted? I tend to use Old English words when I name characters, and given what I've seen so far, there looks to be Middle Eastern naming conventions in place, along with maybe some East Asian, so my typical names might be out of place.

WalkingTarget
2009-02-11, 01:57 PM
I see. What are the naming conventions in Exalted? I tend to use Old English words when I name characters, and given what I've seen so far, there looks to be Middle Eastern naming conventions in place, along with maybe some East Asian, so my typical names might be out of place.

There's room for a lot of variation in names.

One of the standards (and one I like) seems to be Adjective Noun (not to be confused with Bor's CoH character). Harmonious Jade and Sad Ivory being two names from the main book. Stuff like that is easy to come up with.

Otherwise, you're right in that there's a distinct Asian feel to the naming conventions in the setting, but you shouldn't feel constrained by that.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 02:02 PM
Abyssals have it differently, they have to forsake their name and throw them into the Abyss. They are then given a title. Saying their real name hurts them by giving them Resonance, which makes them more...dealthy, pale, guant things like that

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 02:04 PM
There's room for a lot of variation in names.

One of the standards (and one I like) seems to be Adjective Noun (not to be confused with Bor's CoH character). Harmonious Jade and Sad Ivory being two names from the main book. Stuff like that is easy to come up with.

Otherwise, you're right in that there's a distinct Asian feel to the naming conventions in the setting, but you shouldn't feel constrained by that.

Ah, so it's like Jade Empire!

Iethloc
2009-02-11, 02:28 PM
I'm going to spoiler my response to FatR since I'm tired of long posts.

Wrong. It is about CR 5-7. An equvalent to Dex 5, Melee 5 (your skill contributes to your ability to hit people exactly as much as maximum normal muscle potential) is Str 18, BAB +4 (your skill contributes to your ability to hit people exactly as much as maximum normal muscle potential). +1 is slightly better than a die in Exalted. The rest of the calculations are similarly wrong.

I know about how muscles help you hit people. But in Exalted, that's what Dexterity does. Strength contributes to damage, how much you can lift, and possibly clinches, not hitting stuff with your sword.

A normal, everyday task in Exalted is difficulty 0, 1 or 2, 3 for more complex stuff like making a suit of armor. A normal, everyday task in D&D is DC 0, 5 or 10, or 15 for more complex stuff like...making a suit of armor. So, in order to keep my crop of wheat healthy, I need at least 10 dice? Are all real-life farmers all Heroic Mortals?

No, no they are not. Even an Extra in Exalted can do stuff up to DC 20, and since they can't gather up pools of 16 dice for anything but attacking with a highly accurate weapon (another uber character of mine was responsible for that), one die in Exalted is NOT about equal to +1.


This is also reflected in actual play. In Exalted, starting characters usually find themselves unable to one-shot even the weakest of mortal mooks, without or even with wasting resources, unless they specialze in some big, damaging weapon.

A mook has three health levels. I can one-shot them WITH MY FISTS. If you're talking about heroic mortals, of COURSE you can't one-shot them without big weapons in the beginning! Exalted actually has some realism. You have to wait an Essence or two before you get the really good tricks.



I totally doubt ''viable'' part. Being able to kill a lot of mortals doesn't make you viable. Being in the same league as your peers does. Comparing with DnD again, it is hard not to have ability to waste NI number of CR -4 and lower opponents, but this doesn't insure you from sucking in comparison to appropriate CR threats.

Oh, they have no problems killing higher-level opponents. The Lunar is currently fighting a 3rd Circle Demon and winning. The Chained Abyssal paralyzed a wyld behemoth and then TORE OUT ITS SKULL to be used as one of the materials for Uller. As for Uller...I didn't have him fight a Third Circle Demon because it would be over too quickly. The 8-sectioned staff wielder? Some time ago we faced off against an opponent that was supposed to be WAY too hard for us (Essence 7 I think)...I kicked his ass. And the axe-wielder...that's Hrodgeir. His name is forever infamous in my group for being one of the most powerful and awesome characters I ever made.

Each and every one of them would have no trouble fighting their peers, AND still be able to slaughter an army of mortals afterward. They are all high-level Exalts, and no matter how much you doubt their power, they have all changed Creation (for better or worse) in their campaigns. If you're going to insist they are weak even after this, then it seems the only way I can respond is by pulling out their stats. Once we get that far, though, it should probably be taken to PMs.

Also, most of my characters just had a nickname generated (and often modified by me) by this handy little thing. (http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=adname) I often have trouble thinking of names, and, at the very least, it has provided me with inspiration. It once generated the name "Moron" for me.

For fancy names/titles, this (http://www.voidstate.com/name_generator/) should also help.

Artanis
2009-02-11, 03:22 PM
One thing I just realized that should be mentioned:

You have to be very careful when comparing Exalted to Goku, because Goku goes through a HUGE range of power levels.

At the start of Dragonball, he isn't that much more powerful than a human. He'd be more a fairly high-Inheritance God-blooded (half-breed, weaker than Exalts). By the time DBZ starts, he would probably be a youngish Dawn. By the end of DBZ, we're talking Essence 6 or 7, minimum.

Kyeudo
2009-02-11, 03:23 PM
Exalted actually supports pretty much all naming conventions. Want a Slavic name? You come from the north. Arabian? South. Pacific Islander? West. Japanese? Blessed Isle. Want to be named Roger? Somewhere in the Scavenger Lands.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 03:24 PM
This is a fantastic name generator, Iethloc! Thanks for sharing it with me!

Oslecamo
2009-02-11, 03:26 PM
Each and every one of them would have no trouble fighting their peers, AND still be able to slaughter an army of mortals afterward. They are all high-level Exalts, and no matter how much you doubt their power, they have all changed Creation (for better or worse) in their campaigns. If you're going to insist they are weak even after this, then it seems the only way I can respond is by pulling out their stats. Once we get that far, though, it should probably be taken to PMs.

See, I think Fatr's problem with your posts is that you don't seem to admit that level 7-8 D&D characters are also pretty darn powerfull already and more than able to slaughter whole countries of CR 1-2 mooks if they feel like it.

But they can do it perfectly fine. Even a decently optimized D&D monk can wipe out the floor with an army of 1st level kobolds/goblins/orcs/whaetever NPCs.

The wizard can enslave whole cities, and the cleric walks around with an army of undead abominations. The druid finally gets to wildshape into lighting shooting bears. Ect ect.

So, since you stated that anything below CR 15 was weak in Exalted terms, using the argument that exalteds can easily wipe out mook armies and change reality , Fatr possibly just wanted to point out that in D&D you can do that before even level 10.

Iethloc
2009-02-11, 03:57 PM
This is a fantastic name generator, Iethloc! Thanks for sharing it with me!

No problem :smallsmile:




Also, it's a bit difficult to compare D&D and Exalted, since D&D is level-based and Exalted is not. Because of this, an Exalted character can specialize in something and do it as well as (according to my estimations) a level 15 character, although they would be weak in other areas. Hence, CR 15 starting combat monsters, and characters who can bend kingdoms to their will. And even after a D&D character reaches mid-level, the Exalt would have access to Essence 3 or 4 charms. Suddenly, the combat monster can attack up to 7 times each action (if he's willing to waste a lot of essence and willpower), and the socialite can use what amounts to mind control (hypnosis is a small trick to the Lawgivers).

D&D characters can still do a lot of the tricks Exalts can, but an Exalt can get to it first. Once you get to Essence 5-6, though, Exalts leap in power (Dreams of the First Age...). After that it's usually futile to compare them to other systems.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 03:59 PM
So isn't that an argument for Exalted. The fact that a mid to semi-low level D&D is far more epic then Exalted, thus rendering the argument that Exalted is just way to EPIC moot?

And dosn't that continue to point out that D&D is more flawed then Exalted, where it is easier to break then Exalted? I guess I just don't get, or agree, with FatR. If the fact you can make an Insta Win button with a little bit of work is a major failing, then by level 2 by RAW of D&D you can beak the game with Pun Pun, but playing the Exalted world in D&D is better....I just don't get it.

Aquillion
2009-02-11, 05:10 PM
Chejop Kejak, the top dog among Sidereal Exalted. He was part of The Usurpation that overthrew the Solars a looooong long time ago, and he's currently the head of the Bronze Faction, which supports sticking with The Realm and keeping the Solars from coming back (as opposed to the Gold Faction, which supports the opposite).One other thing that's important to note is that he is near the end of the normal Sidereal lifespan (technically, a year over it.) All the books are very clear on this: Even if nobody kills him (and he would be helluva difficult to kill), he is going to die very soon. Many of the suggested Sidereal adventures actually begin with his death. He's not really intended to be something the players fight, because by the time they could get anywhere near tough enough to fight him he will already be long dead -- he's more of a plot device to explain the situation in the world at the time of the series beginning, and to provide a reason for even more chaos and plot twists later on when he dies, after the PCs have dealt with their initial smaller-scale goals.

Oslecamo
2009-02-11, 05:13 PM
So isn't that an argument for Exalted. The fact that a mid to semi-low level D&D is far more epic then Exalted, thus rendering the argument that Exalted is just way to EPIC moot?


In exalted, you seem to be forced to go epic. If you don't try to kill your oponent in some exagerated spectacular way you're probably not going to kill him at all.

On D&D, you're given the choice of simply killing the enemy with one clean hit. Believe it or not, there are people who like to play "Krurk smash puny humans!" instead of "(insert here really long exalted style description so you can get the two extra dices on the roll)"

D&D lets you be in control of your destiny. You can destroy that mortal country. But why do it when you just want to spend the night on the tavern drinking booze and flirting?

Aquillion
2009-02-11, 05:24 PM
In exalted, you seem to be forced to go epic. If you don't try to kill your oponent in some exagerated spectacular way you're probably not going to kill him at all.

On D&D, you're given the choice of simply killing the enemy with one clean hit. Believe it or not, there are people who like to play "Krurk smash puny humans!" instead of "(insert here really long exalted style description so you can get the two extra dices on the roll)"

D&D lets you be in control of your destiny. You can destroy that mortal country. But why do it when you just want to spend the night on the tavern drinking booze and flirting?You aren't, strictly speaking, forced to go epic; the game supports wandering from town to town on adventures (although if you want to be really accurate to the source material, you wouldn't play a Solar for that, because Solars are epic by nature and are selected because they were inherently headed for greatness even before their Exaltation -- but plenty of non-epic options for characters exist, like Dragon-Blooded, God-Blooded, or even Enlightened/Heroic Mortals. Don't be fooled by the name -- God-Blooded are at the bottom of the heap, and Heroic Mortals are below the bottom of the heap, barely any better than mooks. But even God-Blooded will still kick a lot of ass against purely human targets.)

You can play a Solar who just wanders the earth righting wrongs if you want, though, beating up suitably-powerful local spirits. Although, yeah, as a Solar it won't seem very heroic if you just focus on purely human bandits, because you can turn them to paste with one punch. You wouldn't have to waste time Stunting against them, though...

Nothing requires that you be heroic, either. There were plenty of non-heroic Solars in the past, and the Exaltation only cares about potential for overall greatness, not morality. If you have the potential to be the world's most horrible psychopath or its most brutal tyrant, the Exaltation can still choose you (which is, when you think about it, something of a flaw in its design...)

The Dragon Blooded and God-Blooded, though, aren't chosen by anything (except who their parents happened to be.) And Heroic Mortals are just people who happen to be a bit tougher than everyone around them... Enlightened Mortals are ones who gained the ability to channel Essence (the main thing that makes Exalted Exalted) to some minor degree through one miscellaneous means or another, although most methods involve risking your life in some dangerous ritual or living as an ascetic for a decade or things like that.

You could also play an Abyssal, Fair Folk, or Alchemical, I suppose, but those tend to be more on the weird side of things, and have more inherent backgrounds attached (whether they want it or not -- and there are some 'rogue' ones -- all Abyssals are inherently antithetical to life, Fair Folk are antithetical to order and creation, and Alchemicals are human-ish machines living inside the mechanical husk of a dreaming and dying elder god.)

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 05:32 PM
I could get used to epic, especially if I get to do something like THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDVvUnhEs_g)!

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 05:33 PM
Think bigger.

Aquillion
2009-02-11, 05:47 PM
Not necessarily. As a Nazgul, the Witch-King is at least equal to a Deathknight, and maybe even to one of the Deathlords (his background heavily matches theirs -- Exalted supposedly specifically avoided using Tolkien for inspiration, but the use of a small number of the super-ghosts of long-dead, corrupted God-Kings as the chief minions of the nearly dead amorphous unbodied big bad(s) is a bit too close for comfort.)

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 06:06 PM
Uh...I was referring to Theoden, not the Witch-King.:smallredface:

I mean I wanna make big, pithy speeches and lead a massive charge that tramples over the forces of evil and the like. Basically, I'd want my character to make as many Rousing Speeches (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RousingSpeech) as possible, as well as have the kinds of bells and whistles paladins normally get. Holy light and all that jazz.

Kyeudo
2009-02-11, 06:23 PM
I could get used to epic, especially if I get to do something like THIS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDVvUnhEs_g)!

You can definately do all of that. Whichever character in that scene you want to be, you could be them in Exalted and party hard. Even the mooks, technically.

Lochar
2009-02-11, 06:24 PM
I point you to (just going by 2e core here) the Zenith caste of Solars.

Caste abilities are Integrity, Performance, Resistance, Survival, and Presence.

Throw your favored abilities to Ride, Melee, and a couple other things and you have a war priest that can lead a charge from the front, while shouting inspiring messages that both cause your followers to feel no pain while at the same time, driving those against you into fear.

While your grand daiklave with it's two yard blade sweeps in front and to the sides of you, mowing through the front lines of the enemy like a scythe through wheat.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 06:40 PM
What about the Dawn caste? They seem the most paladin-like.

Lochar
2009-02-11, 06:45 PM
You could do the same.

The Zenith are actual priests though, which is why I started with them.

Just take the Dawn caste (all the martial abilities are caste ones), add Ride, and pick and choose a few from the Zenith Caste.

It's up to you how it works out.

Artanis
2009-02-11, 06:51 PM
Dawns aren't really Paladins, they're more fighters or generals that happen to be empowered by the Unconquered Sun. Zeniths are the ones who lead people (as opposed to leading armies, which Dawns do). Their anima power gives them the ability to (essentially) deal extra damage to evil stuff like demons, ghosts, and Abyssals.

And Zeniths are officially priests of the Unconquered Sun, with all the benefits thereof...whether they like it or not.


tl;dr:
Dawns fight. Zeniths fight in the name of the Unconquered Sun.


Edit: Addendum

Don't get too caught up in the castes' mechanics. You can make two characters of different castes that are virtually identical in terms of mechanics. The big differences are largely RP. So when choosing between Zenith and Dawn for your "paladin", the question is:
Does he FIGHT evil, or does he fight EVIL?
If it's the former, go with Dawn. If it's the latter, go with Zenith.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 07:04 PM
I want to fight EVIL, so looks like Zenith.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-11, 07:12 PM
I think there is a huge overlap between Zenith and Dawn - "inspiring leader and protector" is a concept that fits both of them equally well. And from these two, I like Zenith more, because Dawn's anima power is useful only when fighting mortals (which kinda fits, since they're supposed to be generals and therefore participate in large battles where most of the participants are mooks), and because Zenith has a better skill list - what's the point of having all weapon skills if you will use only one, maybe two of them? And Zeniths are just awesome in general.

Kyeudo
2009-02-11, 07:43 PM
I usually pick a caste based on what colors I want to be in my characters anima banner. I played a Twilight warrior once just because I wanted a blue and gold anima.

FatR
2009-02-11, 07:46 PM
Reasons why Kejack doesn't smite whomever he wishes
The big flaw in this argument is an assumption that all gods in existence (except, maybe, Incarna, although given the statement, that they are about as powerful as Third Circle demons, I highly doubt that) really can threaten multi-style (or one-style, as long as it is OSoI) SMA users. They cannot. Strongest of the written gods not simply "can be beaten up", not simply are mooks, they border on being nonentities to someone like Green Lady. By comparison of mechanics, elder Sidereals have no reason whatsoever to fear any punishment or even open opposition from gods. Gods that dare to actively work against them can be mindraped or easily and smoothly replaced by more sensible underlings, as long as you don't gank them all at once. Bureaus can't turn destiny against Sidereals when Sidereals control Loom and can flood Bureaus with their invulnerable clones at a moment's notice. Oversight has no defined powers and entirely depends on Sidereals not ignoring it. Much younger and less powerful Exalted once ganked a number beings to whom Incarnae served as maintenance bots, so they will be wise not to interfere.

Therefore, either mechanics or fluff of the game must be ignored or greatly rewritten to make this scenario work. (And this is far from the only such case.)


You're also making a mistake by assuming you can only trust the statblocks. Exalted does not work that way. Statblocks are given for people and things the players are likely to fight (or want to fight, but it would cause problems if they did). The splatbooks also say that things work a certain way, and provide loose and undefined forces for the Storyteller to use to ensure that they work that way.
Statblocks are the very opposite of "loose and undefined". They are concrete and defined measurements of characters' power. If they don't relfect a character's place in the setting properly, they suck and their authors fail at their task. No ifs or buts about it.


And any tricks he (or the Deathlords) can pull, a determined circle of Solars with an Eclipse Caste in it can learn the component charms and martial art techniques for, too -- and then grant them to unlimited high-essence Amalgams.
Wrong. By the rules they can't. For the next 100 years. With the world likely to die within 15 (or, frankly, as soon as Kejack and his buddies keel over from the old age).


Also note that this is Exalted, not D&D; inventing new Charms is a central part of the game, and a big part of the advantage Solars have over Sidereals. There is no such thing as a "perfect combo", because as soon as anyone learns about it they can make a "negate that overpowered trick that Kejack just used to beat up my army" charm to cancel it out.
They can't. No trick can counter sheer power. High Essence >>> everything. Like it or don't that's how the mechanics of the game work. And inventing new Charms is not a central part of the game - after two freaking editions we still have no guidelines for that.


It does matter, because there are people out there who think it matters. You start doing good things in the world, and various people (and gods) who matter in Heaven and Earth will start to come to your side. If you attract enough of them, anyone who isn't willing to smash Creation entirely to win will eventually support you.
It doesn't matter, because yout enemies are willing do smash Creation, heck, that's their main goal. Anyone who can actually ally with you is powerless too. Maybe with exception of a Lunar elder or too.


They can't, because the Aerial legion isn't statted out anywhere
We know of whom it is composed and know that spirit Charms blow. They can.


Stacking the odds in favor of the Solar Exalted is the whole point of being Solar Exalted. :smallbiggrin:
So, the Solar Exalted are so weak, that having blatant plot assistance from authors is their whole point?


Stabbing people with your daiklave only works if the plot allows it to work, too. An enemy with no social or psychological weaknesses is no different from an enemy with no physical weaknesses -- having everything you say bounce off to no effect is no different from having daiklaves bounce off to no effect.
Wrong. See rules. You cannot build a characters that is physically invulnerable without Essence 5+. A character that is socially invulnerable, unless you have beaten him physically first to restrain him, is easy.


Except that my Amalgams can (at least in theory) be equipped with any charm or form of martial arts ever possessed by any Celestial Exalt who ever lived. Theirs can only be equipped with the limited pool they have available from one specific Exalt -- an old one, yes, but Lytek has access to the details on all their charms and many, many more (and no, the Deathlords probably can't go ask Lytek to help them with this part.) Therefore, if it really comes down to an obscure cheesefight, I can make better Amalgams and win.
You can't do that, because you don't have this Exalt on hand. In fact, he just have killed you casually as a part of his weekly Solar-slaying schedule. Also, Lytek is Kejack's ashtray.


By that definition, the fact that your swords don't magically bounce off of every enemy you encounter is, yes, also Storyteller's fiat. Characters have things they care about and motivations that can be understood or exploited in in the same way that they are subject to damage; in Exalted, DM-fiating away one is no different from DM-fiating away the other.
Except no, this is not the same way. Everyone is subject to damage. Not everyone has a motivation that is in any way compatible with you staying alive. In particular, see, you know, Sidereal elders and Deathlords.
Secondly (and again) it is wastly easier to protect yourself from mindscrewing than from phyical damage.
And thirdly, what is the freaking point of social Charms if they don't allow you to be any better at social stuff than a heroic mortal who knows what psychological weakness to exploit?


Stuff about Sidereals and Deathlords not being Big Bads
Too bad that they actually are and you're supposed to stop them, except you can't.


Very few heroic epics are just "and then he beat up the enemy because he was massively strong."
Off the top of my head, Heracles (all his uber-equipment was taken as loot), Achilles, Ziegfried, Roland (OK, he died, but not before slaughtering the enemy army almost to the last man), top-tier fighters from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, bogatyri, etc, etc. Cuchulainn qualifies at least half the time.
That's before we talk about the more modern sources of inspiration. Superheroes, action heroes, anime heroes, videogame heroes win simply because they are just that kickass at least half the time.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 07:49 PM
Forgive me for sounding like an idiot FatR, but what exactly are you trying to say with all this?:smallconfused:

Tengu_temp
2009-02-11, 07:49 PM
I usually pick a caste based on what colors I want to be in my characters anima banner. I played a Twilight warrior once just because I wanted a blue and gold anima.

And here I thought Insar was a Twilight because they have, paradoxically, the best combat anima power.


Forgive me for sounding like an idiot FatR, but what exactly are you trying to say with all this?:smallconfused:

Typical argument about a game's quality. I personally stopped even reading these posts some time ago.

FatR
2009-02-11, 07:53 PM
Irrelevant things.
I repeat: if Exalted is about doind cool stuff, why the heck it has rules-heavy, mechanically exact system that is far more likely than not to kick you in the nards for just picking things that you think are cool? Also, why Exalted combat, while being as mechanically complicated as DnD combat, is so damn repetitive and boring?

Kyeudo
2009-02-11, 08:06 PM
And here I thought Insar was a Twilight because they have, paradoxically, the best combat anima power.


Nope. That was just a bonus. I found out about the twinkery possible from a Twilight after I decided which color to go for.


I repeat: if Exalted is about doind cool stuff, why the heck it has rules-heavy, mechanically exact system that is far more likely than not to kick you in the nards for just picking things that you think are cool? Also, why Exalted combat, while being as mechanically complicated as DnD combat, is so damn repetitive and boring?

The answer is simple: You are using the rules wrong. I don't know exactly how, but if you call the combat rules complicated and exact, you definately are doing something wrong.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 08:06 PM
Typical argument about a game's quality.

Come again?

FatR
2009-02-11, 08:11 PM
No, no they are not. Even an Extra in Exalted can do stuff up to DC 20,
So can even a 1st-level commoner in DnD. So no, this is not a good argument.


A mook has three health levels. I can one-shot them WITH MY FISTS.
It is actually rather hard to do even 9 HL of raw damage with your bare fists (look at rules for extras, you need this much) unless you have a couple hundreds of XP under your belt. And you need significantly more if he wears armor, which standard mooks do. You can be 250+ XP Solar with non-insignificant investment in combat stats and Charms and still fail to one-shot human extras (an example from an actual game, this character also demonsrated to me why social Charms largely blow and how far you must go out of your way to make most of them work decently).

As about the rest of the post, yes, if you wish we can take statblock discussion to PM. I can just note that you obviously talk about high-XP characters and mostly name opponents who are/were instakill fodder to mildly experienced Celestial combat monkeys (gods stopped to be such when they got a perfect defence in 2E).

Kyeudo
2009-02-11, 08:11 PM
Come again?

He's just saying that FatR is an Exalted-hater and can't stand to hear praise for the system. That's his whole motivation.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 08:13 PM
And WHY is this his motivation? I always find the motivations of others fascinating.

FatR
2009-02-11, 08:13 PM
The answer is simple: You are using the rules wrong. I don't know exactly how, but if you call the combat rules complicated and exact, you definately are doing something wrong.
Uh, are you still talking about Exalted, you know, the game that has 10-step process of attack resolution in its second edition?

Tengu_temp
2009-02-11, 08:15 PM
Come again?

A group of people, ranging from one to six billion individuals, argues with each other whether some game is good or not and won't rest until everyone else agrees. Sometimes fun for the involved, not really fun for people who entered a thread looking for constructive discussion.

And, of course, I got ninja-ed hardly.

FatR
2009-02-11, 08:16 PM
And WHY is this his motivation? I always find the motivations of others fascinating.
Why? Because five frigging years of GMing Exalted for a party that has neither desire nor time to learn a new system for the old setting have taught me well how much exactly you must struggle against mechanics to make a decent game and how much exactly of a chore GMing Exalted is.

Innis Cabal
2009-02-11, 08:20 PM
And numerous people who have played just as long disagree with you :smallwink:

And have been trying to give helpful points to people asking about the system.

Tengu_temp
2009-02-11, 08:22 PM
Why? Because five frigging years of GMing Exalted for a party that has neither desire nor time to learn a new system for the old setting have taught me well how much exactly you must struggle against mechanics to make a decent game and how much exactly of a chore GMing Exalted is.

Seeing that other people with similar amount of Exalted experience posted here, I'd say that your stance is highly subjective, and you shouldn't try to sell it as objective and the only truth.

Kyeudo
2009-02-11, 08:23 PM
Uh, are you still talking about Exalted, you know, the game that has 10-step process of attack resolution in its second edition?

You mean the ten step process that boils down to "Declare your charms before we see the attack roll, figure out if you got hit, roll for damage, and counterattack Charms go just before the damage actually gets applied"?


Why? Because five frigging years of GMing Exalted for a party that has neither desire nor time to learn a new system for the old setting have taught me well how much exactly you must struggle against mechanics to make a decent game and how much exactly of a chore GMing Exalted is.

Sounds to me like your group is the problem, not the mechanics. I haven't had to fight the rules a single bit for my players to pump out raw awesome at the drop of a hat.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-11, 08:23 PM
Ah, that explains quite a bit. Thank you.:smallsmile:

FatR
2009-02-11, 08:39 PM
Seeing that other people with similar amount of Exalted experience posted here, I'd say that your stance is highly subjective, and you shouldn't try to sell it as objective and the only truth.
Mechanics are not subjective and I mostly talked about them. Things like combat domination of Twilight caste (at PCs level), or social combat being interrupted by physical but not vice versa, or having 7HL in the game where a starting characters can easily roll 10+ dice damage against you (after armor), or Seven Shadow Evasion + Reflex Sidestep Technique + Leaping Dodge Method combo being the best reliable method of avoiding such damage are not opinions.

Iethloc
2009-02-11, 08:50 PM
So can even a 1st-level commoner in DnD. So no, this is not a good argument.

Ah, so an Extra and a 1st-level commoner are capable of doing DC 20-equivalent stuff without hundreds of experience and 20 dice. So, a DC 20 task might need about 8 dice to do reliably. Therefore, all an extra needs is a good tool (whether a sword or a plow) and he's golden. Just like a 1st-level commoner (or Warrior, for combat).



It is actually rather hard to do even 9 HL of raw damage with your bare fists (look at rules for extras, you need this much) unless you have a couple hundreds of XP under your belt. And you need significantly more if he wears armor, which standard mooks do. You can be 250+ XP Solar with non-insignificant investment in combat stats and Charms and still fail to one-shot human extras (an example from an actual game, this character also demonsrated to me why social Charms largely blow and how far you must go out of your way to make most of them work decently).

Damage charms. Even just Solar Hero form can get me the necessary damage. Extras tend to have low DV's, so my excellent attack pools give me plenty of extra successes to double. And that's before Fist of Iron Technique and Orichalcum Hearthstone Bracers. I could get (assuming 4 Strength) 8 + double extra successes damage. So the Extra would need to be heavily armored to survive a good punch from a Solar Martial Artist. Also, it needs to be post-soak damage, not raw damage.


As about the rest of the post, yes, if you wish we can take statblock discussion to PM. I can just note that you obviously talk about high-XP characters and mostly name opponents who are/were instakill fodder to mildly experienced Celestial combat monkeys (gods stopped to be such when they got a perfect defence in 2E).

Actually, most of the fights I mentioned were pretty hard. Especially the high-level ones, since that's when most Storytellers feel comfortable bringing out the really tough enemies. I've never been reduced to Incapacitated, though.


As for combat, I never found it particularly complicated. Slightly more complex than D&D, yes, but one of the best I've ever encountered.

FatR
2009-02-11, 08:56 PM
You mean the ten step process that boils down to "Declare your charms before we see the attack roll, figure out if you got hit, roll for damage, and counterattack Charms go just before the damage actually gets applied"?
You forgot enemy reactions, which can suddenly change the relevant statistics and the fact that you need to calculate first raw damage (after counting successes - your damage depends on how well you attacked) and then aftersoak damage. As opposed to "roll an attack against AC and damage, and you can roll all dice at once to save time" in DnD.


Sounds to me like your group is the problem, not the mechanics. I haven't had to fight the rules a single bit for my players to pump out raw awesome at the drop of a hat.
My group is not the problem. They're the only reason why I still struggle with this system. Lack of awesome is not the problem. Mechanics are the huge freaking problem. I'm tired of anti-optimization, repetitive (despite stunt descriptions) battles and using the same two modes of attack, except with different descriptions, for a vast majority of opponents. Well, and of extreme character fragility at Terrestrial level. White Wolf printing one overpowered Big Bad after another, instead of some characters with useable statblocks and screwing up high-Essence Charms in general is just salt on wound after that.

Kyeudo
2009-02-11, 09:11 PM
You forgot enemy reactions, which can suddenly change the relevant statistics and the fact that you need to calculate first raw damage (after successes - your damage depends on how well you attacked) and then aftersoak damage. As opposed to "roll an attack against AC and damage, and you can roll all dice at once to save time" in DnD.


Enemy reactions all fall into "Charms get used before the attack roll," since that's all that two entire steps are. Three steps are just figuring out if you hit. The two part damage step is dirt simple if you can pass grade school, since it's "Is my raw damage bigger than his hardness?" and "Subtract his soak from my raw damage."

When you boil off the extremely specific phase system it condenses to "Use charms, figure out if he hit, roll damage, counterattack."

Jerthanis
2009-02-11, 10:55 PM
I repeat: if Exalted is about doind cool stuff, why the heck it has rules-heavy, mechanically exact system that is far more likely than not to kick you in the nards for just picking things that you think are cool? Also, why Exalted combat, while being as mechanically complicated as DnD combat, is so damn repetitive and boring?

I'm not going to say you're wrong... because I do agree with you. Exalted is not mechanics lite by any stretch of the imagination or definition. Ten step combat is only the first hurdle. Varied speeds of social attacks, what counts as a Social attack, and not a Social Parry... M:tG style legalese in charm interactions... plenty of things I'm not thinking about right now make the game very complex to run, and quite fatiguing to run as a GM.

However, I will say that this complexity being a problem is a personal reaction, and not a universal truth. Personally, I love the complexity for two reasons:

1.) The slow discovery of what you're actually capable of, and will be capable of when you come into your power. A more straightforwardly handwaving system of "Your words inspire people to heroism" without somewhat roundabout mechanics would create a logical connection between ability and result, but not an emotional connection between Charm and Character Power.

Having exacting mechanical descriptions help a player truly understand on a deep level the effects their character's powers have on the world around them. Knowing you have +22 to Diplomacy is very different than knowing an opponent will lose 3 dots of willpower if they refuse your offer, and they cannot interrupt you while you give the offer unless they spend another willpower point. Social Combat, and Regular Combat for that matter, may be difficult, but the exacting mechanical changes back and forth really help a player know the exact effect their abilities have on the world around them, and that, in my mind, is the entire purpose of system in RPGs.

There's a Solar charm in the Abyssal Book, which is one of the Mirror charms... it's called "You Can Be More" and it's a Presence charm meant to inspire people to greatness. Mechanically, it turns an Extra into a Heroic Mortal (or Heroic whatever it was before if it was something else that qualifies). It's so badass that it changes fate itself to give the subject a destiny of greatness. As it is, with complex mechanics behind it, it's one of my favorite charms. In a rules-lite game, a superpower that says "Someone is inspired by your words, and will achieve greatness" would inspire yawns and a reluctance to take it.

2.) DMing/GMing/STing is rewarding, and any action is more rewarding the more work you put into it. Exalted STing is rewarding when you see your great plan come together... as your players fight on the vertical plane of a giant obsidian spire, and then shatter it to pieces, dancing between the sharper-than-razor shards as they fall. Such reward is certainly possible in 3.5 D&D... in creating unique monster encounters, or what have you, and I'm not saying that Exalted's rewarding STing is unique to the system or anything... I'm just saying the mechanical difficulty is simply an aspect of the rewardingness of STing for it.

Anyway... my point is, you're not wrong, and it's a good idea to suggest caution to a person newly interested in the idea... but I still suggest whoever's interested read the book for themselves.

I wouldn't suggest D&D as an alternate system, but that's because I kind of don't like it. This is totally personal, but I don't think the system of feats and spells adequately reflects the skill and mastery of the Exalted. Without massive changes to the skill system and powers system, you couldn't reflect the breadth and depth of skill of individual exalts... I dunno, I'd have to see a D&D adaption for Exalted before condemning it.

If I would suggest an alternative system to Exalted for running Exalted chronicles, it'd be Spirit of the Century, a Fate system game designed for Pulp style cinema/comics. It has Aspects, which are descriptive phrases about your character, and you can activate them when they're beneficial to you at the cost of a fate point, and the DM can activate them when they're penalizing by GIVING you a fate point. Fate points can be spent in a variety of ways, including activating certain Stunts, which you gain based on having high ratings in your Skills, which are what they sound like. I'm reasonably sure the basic Fate system is freeware or donationware, but I'm not sure, you could look for information on it online.

Poison_Fish
2009-02-11, 11:05 PM
This is also preference for me. But I don't believe D&D had the depth to cover the wide range of abilities an exalt would have either. A level based system, in my opinion, has always felt restricting vs. playing more open systems.

Also, on the whole, FatR, I disagree with you. I've also run and played exalted nearly since it came out (Just now trying out 2E). While it isn't my favorite system by any means, I've never felt it that restricting in the mechanics. Part of your problem, honestly, seems to stem that your trying to run it to hardline, like how D&D can often be run.

I'm going to say this. Exalted isn't a game well suited to those who think only mechanically. You seem to be only be approaching it in this manner. Your entire dislike for the system appears to hinge primarily on this.

Aquillion
2009-02-12, 12:20 AM
The big flaw in this argument is an assumption that all gods in existence (except, maybe, Incarna, although given the statement, that they are about as powerful as Third Circle demons, I highly doubt that) really can threaten multi-style (or one-style, as long as it is OSoI) SMA users. They cannot. Strongest of the written gods not simply "can be beaten up", not simply are mooks, they border on being nonentities to someone like Green Lady. By comparison of mechanics, elder Sidereals have no reason whatsoever to fear any punishment or even open opposition from gods. Gods that dare to actively work against them can be mindraped or easily and smoothly replaced by more sensible underlings, as long as you don't gank them all at once. Bureaus can't turn destiny against Sidereals when Sidereals control Loom and can flood Bureaus with their invulnerable clones at a moment's notice. Oversight has no defined powers and entirely depends on Sidereals not ignoring it. Much younger and less powerful Exalted once ganked a number beings to whom Incarnae served as maintenance bots, so they will be wise not to interfere.Uh. The Unconquered Sun has exactly one defined ability, and that is that he is fated to alway defeat all enemies. No part of Creation (including, yes, Sidereals) can evade, defend against, or do anything about this; it was intrinsically written into the underlying principals of Creation itself. And high-ranking fifth-rank non-Incarnae deities have similar 'perfect' powers -- not perfect as in the sense of Perfect Defenses or attacks, but actually genuinely perfect in that they cannot be obstructed, defended against, or interfered with by any means. The example of this sort of ability given in the books is Yo-Ping's ability to enforce peace -- when he demands that a fight stop, it stops, period, fullstop. You don't get to roll mental defense, you don't get to spend willpower, you don't get to use charms -- unless you're an Incarnae, Yozi, a Neverborn, or a Fey equivalent in power to a Balor, you stop fighting instantly with no dice rolled and no chance to respond. That's only one example, though, and other high-ranking deities with similarly inviolate powers exist even below the Incarnae. While it doesn't outright say what the perfect powers of fifth-rank Death deities

Also note that most Gods do not even have specific lists of charms. General guidelines are set down, but the Storyguide is encouraged to add any other charms they consider appropriate to the respective deities. Remember, there are gods for everything -- if you have a perfect trick or think you have a particularly overpowered martial arts charm, there is a god of that martial arts charm somewhere in Yu-Shan who (obviously, I hope) possesses that charm. Also note that gods are capable of learning martial arts if they choose, and while they are slow and indolent at doing so, the oldest of them have had far, far longer than anyone else in Creation (short of perhaps the First and Forsaken Lion) to realize that, hey, this ability is sort of neat and perhaps they should devote a fraction of one of their enumerable centuries to learning it. (I probably don't have to bother explaining why trying to keep your technique a secret isn't going to work if you plan to war against all of heaven -- but even aside from that issue, whether or not you keep it a secret, martial arts gods are still going to know about it.)

If you had read the text more carefully and not merely the statblocks, you would also know that most statblocks are given are merely guidelines. They are intended to provide the Storyteller with a general sense of the sorts of abilities that the creature in question might have; they are not a hard-and-fast instruction as to how powerful XYZ is. Storytellers are encouraged to, say, drastically power-down the listed Deathlords if they want an all-out brawl, or power them up if necessary... like everything else outside of the core book (and even some chapters of the core book are like this), they are grab-bags to assist the Storyteller in crafting the world, not necessarily whole and complete things to be thrown into the world without thought towards what other things you're using at the moment or where your story is.

Oslecamo
2009-02-12, 03:26 AM
If you had read the text more carefully and not merely the statblocks, you would also know that most statblocks are given are merely guidelines. They are intended to provide the Storyteller with a general sense of the sorts of abilities that the creature in question might have; they are not a hard-and-fast instruction as to how powerful XYZ is. Storytellers are encouraged to, say, drastically power-down the listed Deathlords if they want an all-out brawl, or power them up if necessary... like everything else outside of the core book (and even some chapters of the core book are like this), they are grab-bags to assist the Storyteller in crafting the world, not necessarily whole and complete things to be thrown into the world without thought towards what other things you're using at the moment or where your story is.

So you're basically saying "rule zero the hell out of it untill it fits your tastes"? Isn't that considered some kind of heresy around here?

You know, it would be wonderfull if most people also realized you can also rule zero D&D(or any other table RPG for that matter) to benefit your personal preferences, but people keep complaining about minor things that they can easily change themselves. So don't be admired if they do the same thing for exalted.

(Yes, people rule zero D&D. Their players also have imagination thank you very much. It's not like there isn't a board fully dedicated to it below this one)

Jeivar
2009-02-12, 03:37 AM
Anyway, I know I haven't commented since starting the thread (been kind of overwhelmed by the number of replies :) ), but I'd like to thank everyone for their input. I've decided to give Exalted a try, and the 2nd edition core book should arrive at my doorstep today. Thanks. :D

Aquillion
2009-02-12, 03:51 AM
So you're basically saying "rule zero the hell out of it untill it fits your tastes"? Isn't that considered some kind of heresy around here?

You know, it would be wonderfull if most people also realized you can also rule zero D&D(or any other table RPG for that matter) to benefit your personal preferences, but people keep complaining about minor things that they can easily change themselves. So don't be admired if they do the same thing for exalted.

(Yes, people rule zero D&D. Their players also have imagination thank you very much. It's not like there isn't a board fully dedicated to it below this one)Well, it's not entirely the same. These are setting things, not basic rules things -- it's not the same as telling your Solars "I've changed the rules for learning new charms, it's XYZ now", and not even the same as saying, in D&D, "I've changed how orcs work." In different games, it is not only normal but expected that iconic figures might differ in subtle ways -- it would get boring very quickly if they didn't. This also allows you to use them in different ways; one of the key things about the Exalted books is that they're, in theory, built to give the storyteller flexability while proving a rich background. D&D's Eberron setting encourages you to raise or lower the levels of iconic characters if you want to use them in a particular way that requires it; Exalted works the same way.

And, of course, Exalted does have its own version of a rule zero -- if you don't like it, change it; if it's not fun for you, change it. Since we're talking about fairly easy things to change here (obscure style XYZ or particular NPC ABC from splatbook XYZ is not in play or is using a houseruled version instead would seem to address most of the problems people raise with Sidereal martial arts, since most of the complaints people have are for a few few specific styles from the splatbooks), it's not a big deal.

If you don't like a particular rule restricting the players (I've noticed that the 100-years cap to raise your essence above 5 attracting some ire), that's even easier. The books even say at various points that creation is huge and strange powers that can break the rules in all sorts of ways exist -- there are ways for Dragonblooded to learn Celestial Circle Sorcery, for mortals to learn Terrestrial Circle Sorcery, for Exaltations -- even Solar ones -- to be moved from person to person (although not, to my knowledge, without killing the old host) and deliberately grafted into a new person of your choosing. All these things break the rules; that's the point. Strange and unique artifacts, powers, or knowledge can break the rules -- it wouldn't be nearly so useful if it couldn't. If you want to go above 5 essence quickly, search for a way to do it (as I mentioned, there's at least one canonical way, by reliving the experiences that were used to fast-develop Solars to put newly-reborn Exalted back into battle during the Primordial War, but others doubtless exist, and those methods could be rediscovered in their own right.)

Yes, yes, this all requires working with the Storyteller. That's normal for most systems, but it's a particularly big focus in Storyteller-type games like Exalted. (They're not supposed to be aggressively trying to kill you, either, though that's true in just about any setting short of Call of Cthulu and Paranoia, and even in Paranoia you're usually better off helping players kill themselves.) While you're not supposed to be working against the DM in D&D, either, you're supposed to work with the Storyteller much much more than in other games. That is part of the point of having, outlining, and following motivations. If you want to get a specific artifact or power, the rules specifically encourage talking to the storyteller about it and figuring out if / how it can be worked in. If you want to change or define a small aspect of the undescribed setting yourself, the Stunting rules specifically define a method you can do to do so -- you possibly could do that in D&D, but in Exalted it's part of the core mechanic. Storyteller-system games are always based on the principal that everyone in the group is working together to produce a story, not just stomping through the Storyteller's dungeon for loot.

Does this mean that those individual things I referred to in Exalted are not broken? Hell no. Obviously a splatbook that requires that kind of houseruling or section-based banning has major issues, and obviously just because you can houserule something doesn't mean it's broken (if you must houserule something, it is obviously broken.) But claiming (as FatR seems to be) that having to do that anywhere means the entire system is inherently broken is equally silly; Pun-Pun and the Jumplomancer don't mean that D&D is unplayable, after all. Every system out there with more than a handful of books has a few with major bloopers or glaringly imbalanced things in them. That doesn't even mean that the entire book is broken, just those pages. Tear them out and use the rest.

As for setting things, tweaking your setting on the fly is something all DMs do (it's something all DMs have to do, since no setting can anticipate every possible contingency.) The fact that there's some very good and useful ideas written down in the books doesn't mean that your games of Exalted have to slavishly follow those ideas; and you are specifically not encouraged to slavishly follow those ideas (heck, four out of the thirteen Deathlords are totally and completely undefined. The same goes for most of the Neverborn. You can use those and drop the rest off the face of the earth if you want.)

Yes, there are a few individual pages, powers, statblocks and so forth that have problems, especially in the splatbooks, but that doesn't mean that the authors are failing to do their job on a cosmic scale across the entire game; it doesn't even mean that those individual books are useless.

Oslecamo
2009-02-12, 07:42 AM
Storyteller-system games are always based on the principal that everyone in the group is working together to produce a story, not just stomping through the Storyteller's dungeon for loot.

I don't know about other D&D groups, but my RL life groups already plays D&D like that for years. Yes, we're stomping trough the dungeon for loot, but it's a mean to an end, not the end itself. Be it stoping the demonic invasion, or uniting with said demons because the king treat us like expendable assets. We talk before and during the campaign to ask certain things changed in the world. Wanna create your own guild to spread your reputation? We can arrange something out. Wanna try to make the vicious gnolls stop the war instead of wiping them from the face of the earth as you were ordered? Well, then get a way to talk to their leaders. We go as far as making up gods for clerics players who don't like none of the standard gods.

Heck, once we even managed to convince the local city to clean up the dungeon from monsters with us. We got just a fraction of the gold and experience, but helped us get to that sacred artifact in the end of the dungeon that much faster and safely.

Are there people who play D&D just to stomp the dungeon? Yes. But not all players play like that. Check out Saph's campaign jouran of the Red hand of Doom, where one of the players changed sides to the bad guys and attacked the party during combat, so he could escape torture from the big evil dragon. He wasn't trying to stomp the dungeon. He was trying to make a story. As a player the torture part couldn't affect him, and would have been more "stompy" to team up with the team to take down the dragon, but since the character had before agreed to team up with the dragon to escape painfull torture, he kept his word and betrayed the party. Granted, the team part went down the drain, but still made for some very good tale. Betrayal happens.

The DMG even says to reward specially good roleplaying players with extra exp.

FatR
2009-02-12, 08:14 AM
Uh. The Unconquered Sun has exactly one defined ability, and that is that he is fated to alway defeat all enemies. No part of Creation (including, yes, Sidereals) can evade, defend against, or do anything about this; it was intrinsically written into the underlying principals of Creation itself. And high-ranking fifth-rank non-Incarnae deities have similar 'perfect' powers -- not perfect as in the sense of Perfect Defenses or attacks, but actually genuinely perfect in that they cannot be obstructed, defended against, or interfered with by any means. The example of this sort of ability given in the books is Yo-Ping's ability to enforce peace -- when he demands that a fight stop, it stops, period, fullstop. You don't get to roll mental defense, you don't get to spend willpower, you don't get to use charms -- unless you're an Incarnae, Yozi, a Neverborn, or a Fey equivalent in power to a Balor, you stop fighting instantly with no dice rolled and no chance to respond.
Wasn't avare that they had written this... this... oh, crap CoC-acceptable words fail to properly characterize this stuff, in recent 2nd Edition books (as I said, I stopped reading them). So, they have introduced yet another class of even untouchably-er beings in the game that was supposed to be about the supremely powerful heroes, created to do things that no god could ever do? Damn. PCs beings underpowered punks is just so incredibly thematic for it that I cannot help but weep at this touch of brilliance... and being so, so glad about giving DnD 3.5 another try.

As yet another side note, some things are easy to rule-zero away and some are not. Characters having as much HLs (and no adequate HL-boosting Charms) as they did in oWoD (and not having any of the ways to stay alive after being taken past Incapacitated, that were typical for oWoD) in a game where a typical amount of damage thrown around is way higher is not an easy thing to houserule, because houseruling such basic things causes a cascade of consequences throughout the entire system. Similarly, you cannot easily rule-zero away more attritions wars of perfect defence-based combat, because the rest of the system assumes that Solar-level characters spam perfect defences in challenging fights. For example, by keeping characters as fragile as described above. You need to houserule so much, that you'll end up with your personal edition.

And screwed up statblocks are not easy to rule-zero away. Or, in other words, they are easy, but then they become a wasted space in the book, and demand from you to create a replacement yourself. As if preparing a confrontation with a Big Bad and his minions in a game that doesn't have a workable enemy manual, wasn't demanding enough work.

FatR
2009-02-12, 08:59 AM
This is also preference for me. But I don't believe D&D had the depth to cover the wide range of abilities an exalt would have either. A level based system, in my opinion, has always felt restricting vs. playing more open systems.

Also, on the whole, FatR, I disagree with you. I've also run and played exalted nearly since it came out (Just now trying out 2E). While it isn't my favorite system by any means, I've never felt it that restricting in the mechanics. Part of your problem, honestly, seems to stem that your trying to run it to hardline, like how D&D can often be run.


I'm going to say this. Exalted isn't a game well suited to those who think only mechanically. You seem to be only be approaching it in this manner. Your entire dislike for the system appears to hinge primarily on this.
But, but, but, how you're supposed to think about the system (as opposed to the setting) if not mechanically?

Also, I don't run the game hardline. I stopped using as many subsystems as I can and also stopped generating enemies by the same rules as PCs many months ago. I rulezeroed out all Charms of Essence 6+ and 100-years-before-you-can-play-with-the-big-boys rule. I give out 9-10 XP per session, on average. I pretty much ignore all fluff that I don't like and have no problems (that's why I don't bitch that much about the setting here). But, unfortunately, I don't have enough time on my hands to write and playtest a whole new combat system that would make high-level combats interesting to run and low-level combats less lethal. This, by the way, has nothing to do with "dungeon-crawling" or adversarial mentality. This has everything to do with game-mechanical aspect of the confrontations being mechanics-heavy, but without typical benefits of heavy mechanics, such as diversity, wide array of options and interesting tactical/mecnanical decisions. Oh, mechanics seem to offer them. Except, the first time someone at the game table tries to optimize at Solar level, the game swiftly collapses into a very narrow spectrum of efficient choices, both in character generation and in actual combat. At lower power levels it is significantly more interesting. Except I found myself forced to fudge damage rolls, so that PCs would stay in one piece, far too often to my liking.

Kyeudo
2009-02-12, 12:01 PM
Now we're getting somewhere.

I have to admit that what you have their is a valid grievance. As you ascend the power spectrum, what is and is not a good tactic probably does narrow down from a mechanical point of view.

Still, Exalted wasn't made as a small unit tactics simulator. It was made to convey movie-style action, where one man takes down a small army and faces off mano-e-mano with the villian. Something's going to have to be sacrificed along the way to achieve that.

If you want interesting tactics, I hear 4th Edition D&D does a good job of providing that and its not a tough system to pick up.

If you find your players and villians can't take a hit, jack up the effectiveness of Ox-Body Technique. Double the health levels or more if you have to.

Jerthanis
2009-02-12, 12:05 PM
Wasn't avare that they had written this... this... oh, crap CoC-acceptable words fail to properly characterize this stuff, in recent 2nd Edition books (as I said, I stopped reading them). So, they have introduced yet another class of even untouchably-er beings in the game that was supposed to be about the supremely powerful heroes, created to do things that no god could ever do? Damn. PCs beings underpowered punks is just so incredibly thematic for it that I cannot help but weep at this touch of brilliance... and being so, so glad about giving DnD 3.5 another try.

This completely untouchable god? Concept of: Wins, no matter what. Patron of those who killed the unkillable? The only official statistics he's ever gotten is "A circle of five essence 5 solars can kill him."

The reason he turned his back on the Solars: He knew if he went down to kick them around until they weren't crazy anymore, they'd just kill his rear and move on with their lives.

I haven't followed the particulars of your argument about why Kejak would or wouldn't kill every living god in Yu-Shan, but I'd like to put forth this theory: People don't tend to kill people who are generally nice to them without a really good reason.

And I just concluded a story where a group at essence 4, within the limits of one chronicle that lasted a little less than 10 months, killed the Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Waters... (only one ability removed from his writeup, the 3m noncharm action perfect defense... he still had his Charm action perfects) and the only thing that saved the life of one of the characters was taking Ox Body three times to expand his health levels so... I really don't know what you mean when you say there's no chance for characters to overcome story NPCs, or that there's no way to increase your Health Levels to be able to take a hit.

FatR
2009-02-12, 02:19 PM
This completely untouchable god? Concept of: Wins, no matter what. Patron of those who killed the unkillable? The only official statistics he's ever gotten is "A circle of five essence 5 solars can kill him."
That wasn't official statistics. These were words of a devolper who doesn't work on the gameline anymore in an Internet conversation. And see, I want to play in the setting where a circle of five essence 5 solars can indeed kill UCS. Or a circle of essence 6-7 other Exalted, for that matter. I don't want to play on the setting where numerous NPCs are given "You Lose" abilities. No matter whether they are gods, Sidereals or Deathlords. This is not WoD.


And I just concluded a story where a group at essence 4, within the limits of one chronicle that lasted a little less than 10 months, killed the Bodhisattva Anointed by Dark Waters... (only one ability removed from his writeup, the 3m noncharm action perfect defense... he still had his Charm action perfects)
Let me first say, that I think this was a great game. But you need to remove far more from his statblock to make such scenario possible. First of all you need to replace "All Solar and Abyssal Charms for which he possesses the prerequisite Ability ratings" with "All Solar and Abyssal Charms from corebook and Abyssal book for which he possesses the prerequisite Ability ratings", so that he will be just a villain, permanently killable only by a secret weakness as opposed to villain that can make a circle of Essence 4 characters cease to exist by snapping his fingers. Or, depending on how you interpet certain poorly-worded Charms from Dreams of the First Age and whether your PCs have Charms from this book, requires a couple hundreds of ticks to fight (and is still likely to outlast you in the end).

To think of it, perhaps the true flaw of Exalted lies not so much in screwed-up (whether overpowered or weak) statblocks, as in lack of a decent enemy manual, which makes screwed-up statblocks aggravating. Yeah, we have spirit books, but there is just a scant handful of beings there that can play at high-XP level, whether physically or socially, there. Creatures of the Wyld were in the first edition, and most threats from there fit heroic mortals scale, while most of the rest can mildly challenge experienced/optimized Dragonblooded.

Anyway, perhaps I should should note that some posts this thread made me feel more positive about Exalted. Iethloc's character roster, in particular, was quite cool.

Learnedguy
2009-02-12, 04:09 PM
That wasn't official statistics. These were words of a devolper who doesn't work on the gameline anymore in an Internet conversation. And see, I want to play in the setting where a circle of five essence 5 solars can indeed kill UCS. Or a circle of essence 6-7 other Exalted, for that matter. I don't want to play on the setting where numerous NPCs are given "You Lose" abilities. No matter whether they are gods, Sidereals or Deathlords. This is not WoD.

Granted, I've never actually played a exalted game, but in my experience there is no such thing as a "You lose" ability. Unless it's an ability named "you lose" of course. Yeah, anyway;

The Unconquered Sun is destined to win any battle? Then outsmart him somehow. Make him defeat himself. There are lots of precedence in mythology of heroes outsmarting stronger "undefeatable" foe (the aesir and Fenris comes to mind)

Don't stare at the limitations, stare at the possibilities!

edit: actually, I think an opponent "destined to win every battle" is a rather interesting scenario. It forces you to really think outside the box, which is something I really enjoy.

So, how would one defeat the Unconquered Sun? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is engaging him in a unending battle! Find an opponent who can't be defeated, and he'll be stuck forever!

Alternatively, fool him into fighting your other foes. Guaranteed victory!

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-12, 04:35 PM
So, how would one defeat the Unconquered Sun? Well, the first thing that comes to mind is engaging him in a unending battle! Find an opponent who can't be defeated, and he'll be stuck forever!

They tried something like that in Greek mythology once. There was this fox that could never be caught, and it was menacing the countryside, so a king sent his best hunting hound, which caught anything it chased. The resulting paradox was bad for some reason so Zeus turned them both into stone to take care of the problem.

wadledo
2009-02-12, 05:03 PM
They tried something like that in Greek mythology once. There was this fox that could never be caught, and it was menacing the countryside, so a king sent his best hunting hound, which caught anything it chased. The resulting paradox was bad for some reason so Zeus turned them both into stone to take care of the problem.

And the system works.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-12, 05:16 PM
Eh? What do you mean the system works? I was saying making this Unconquered Sun fellow, who can never be defeated, fight something that will defeat whatever it fights would probably cause an even worse paradox than the scenario I just described from Greek mythology. From my understanding paradoxes are bad for the fabric of reality.

chiasaur11
2009-02-12, 05:28 PM
Eh? What do you mean the system works? I was saying making this Unconquered Sun fellow, who can never be defeated, fight something that will defeat whatever it fights would probably cause an even worse paradox than the scenario I just described from Greek mythology. From my understanding paradoxes are bad for the fabric of reality.

The system is Zeus killing things.
I, personally, favor the system of Hercules killing things, but..

Iethloc
2009-02-12, 05:32 PM
Exalted actually has a dedicated workforce on the Loom of Fate (which determines every single aspect of the world) called Pattern Spiders, who, appropriately, weave on the Loom of Fate. They never, ever, ever get a break, since they quite literally have to take care of EVERYTHING. When you pour a glass of water, they make sure the water goes down. When you drop a match in water, they make sure it's extinguished instead of setting the water on fire.

They really, really, really hate paradoxes...and they also determine what happens when one comes up.

Did I mention they can bite the threads that make up your form, and that they have a poison that really, really screws you over when they do?

Normally, only Sidereals do enough to screw up the Loom to provoke them, since their powers are directly tied to it, but it would certainly make sense to do it to someone else if they find a way to make a paradox.

Lochar
2009-02-12, 05:36 PM
They actually have a semi-answer for that.

In the Charms, when you have an unbeatable attack, and an unbeatable defense one of them does win.

I think it's defense, but I can't actually put my finger on the page that describes it.

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-12, 05:37 PM
So having the Unconquered Sun fight an opponent that's destined to beat whatever it fights wouldn't even happen. Just as I thought.

Oslecamo
2009-02-12, 06:14 PM
The system is Zeus killing things.
I, personally, favor the system of Hercules killing things, but..

You do realize that Zeus was forced to kill his own inocent sons, and then a bunch of monsters to prove his inocence, and finally kill himself, right?

Archpaladin Zousha
2009-02-12, 06:20 PM
You do realize that Zeus was forced to kill his own inocent sons, and then a bunch of monsters to prove his inocence, and finally kill himself, right?

What? Zeus was a god. Immortal. He couldn't possibly kill himself!

Jerthanis
2009-02-12, 07:27 PM
That wasn't official statistics. These were words of a devolper who doesn't work on the gameline anymore in an Internet conversation. And see, I want to play in the setting where a circle of five essence 5 solars can indeed kill UCS. Or a circle of essence 6-7 other Exalted, for that matter. I don't want to play on the setting where numerous NPCs are given "You Lose" abilities. No matter whether they are gods, Sidereals or Deathlords. This is not WoD.

My mistake, it was related to me as if it were official. One question though: what means do you use to play D&D in the way you describe above? Because D&D seems to be a lot about the Strong being Unstoppable by the Weak.



Let me first say, that I think this was a great game. But you need to remove far more from his statblock to make such scenario possible. First of all you need to replace "All Solar and Abyssal Charms for which he possesses the prerequisite Ability ratings" with "All Solar and Abyssal Charms from corebook and Abyssal book for which he possesses the prerequisite Ability ratings", so that he will be just a villain, permanently killable only by a secret weakness as opposed to villain that can make a circle of Essence 4 characters cease to exist by snapping his fingers. Or, depending on how you interpet certain poorly-worded Charms from Dreams of the First Age and whether your PCs have Charms from this book, requires a couple hundreds of ticks to fight (and is still likely to outlast you in the end).


Okay, fair enough... but you shouldn't assume every group has access to a limited edition boxed set that came out in like, May of last year and sold out within 2 months of printing... and about which I've heard absolutely nothing but horrible stuff about since. A newbie to the game most certainly won't have trouble with info gleaned from bad charms in Dreams. And if Dreams is the reason high tier enemies can wipe anyone and anything less than them, don't use Dreams.

I would also point out that it sounds like you play the game where Balors would always summon a second Balor to use Blasphemy every round, causing an automatic TPK if no one was mindblanked ahead of time. Some creatures or powers are just unfair... and part of being a fair ST is not punishing players for not being able to beat unfair abilities.

And I guess technically I did keep him from having both sides of mirror charms, so he only had 6 banked charmless perfects from Flitting Moth Evasion, not 12 from that AND Protection of Celestial Brilliance, and he had 10 fewer health levels overall, so technically I did take a bit more away than I let on at first, but I think it was still somewhat accurate to his official writeup. Mostly though it was that 3m noncharm perfect effect that made him impossible, and anything else I took away was just to make the battle faster. (It still took about one full session)



Anyway, perhaps I should should note that some posts this thread made me feel more positive about Exalted. Iethloc's character roster, in particular, was quite cool.

Well, at least you're not stonewalled in your opinion... It's always good to know someone on the internet is at least willing to allow their minds to change in some small ways.

And you're right... there is no good place to look for a guideline for Antagonists in Exalted, which means it's down to brute force work for the ST and dumb luck to get encounters that work. Supposedly they're coming out with a "Scroll" book with a list of nothing but NPC writeups... but I don't know if that's actually true or not.


You do realize that Zeus was forced to kill his own inocent sons, and then a bunch of monsters to prove his inocence, and finally kill himself, right?

You mean Hercules, not Zeus... probably

Kantolin
2009-02-12, 08:42 PM
What? Zeus was a god. Immortal. He couldn't possibly kill himself!

Zeus's father, who was also immortal, disagrees with you. And I believe the people who predated Chronos also were immortal, but my greek mythology is a bit fuzzy.

Although I also think he means Hercules.