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Weimann
2009-05-03, 02:24 PM
Hello there, fellow playground people. I have a problem.

The story is as follows: a while ago, I came across an RPG named Exalted in my local fantasy book store. It looked fun, I thought, with over-the-top characters and what seemed to be rather intuitive rules, but since I have little time to organize regular meetings and the like, I didn't buy the books. Now, a few weeks ago, I found that White Wolf, the company making Exalted, had uploaded a demo adventure (which can be viewed here (http://download.white-wolf.com/download/download.php?file_id=85)) on their homepage. That's great, since with summer holiday coming up, and me having a few weeks between school ending and my more-than-full time summer work starting up, I thought I could get together with a few of my friends and play that demo adventure, at least so I know if it might be worth buying the source book and try to devote some scheduled time to this game.

All well and good, if not for one thing. I've decided I wanted to DM this thing, and the rules that came with the demo adventure are, well... a bit hard to grasp. I've read it several times and I still wonder how the heck the damage system is supposed to work. Not to mention that there is no info at all on the effects of the primary attributes.

I'm therefore wondering if anyone here has played Exalted before, and would care to straighten out a few question marks, namely these:

Conceptual

Tracking damage
# How does the damage counting system work? It's really a bit of a mess. I have a decent grasp on how the calculation of the attack is meant to work (I hope), but tracking the damage confuses me. There is talk of both health level and health point in the rule text (page 9 in the .pdf linked above), and I can't really work the difference out. Also, it seems to me that some of the pre-rolled characters have very low health and could easily be one-shotted. Some clearification would be great.

Attributes and skills
As has been mentioned above, the rules offer no real explanation on what skills or attributes actually means. Strength, Dexterity and such are easy enough to figure out, but Manipulation? What's the difference between Wits and Intelligence? The same goes for skills; some are straightforward like Survival and Dodge, but what's the Melee skill meant to do? In the section where they explain fighting, no such thing seem to be used. Also, some of the pre-rolled characters have a black box in front of some skills, but no points in them. What would that mean? I realize they want some points to sell the source book on, but I'd like to know what the characters actually can do.

The Stunt rule
It was reading about the Stunt rule that sold me on trying this game out. The idea seems marvellous to me, I really like how it rewards your players for being in character and doing fun stuff. However, I'm a bit uncertain on how to use it. Let's say a character wants to make use of something in the environment. That would require a very throughout description of said environment, and even then, there might be many exciting possibilities lost due to there not being a broom and a mug of tar in the room at any given time. Is there any good way of solving this?

I have a few more details that bother me, but these are the main problems. Any replies are greatly appreciated :)

Terraoblivion
2009-05-03, 03:00 PM
First and foremost i'll say that i recommend Exalted a lot, i believe it to be one of the best systems out there. It has its flaws and poor editing is one of the most obvious of those. I will also say that i do not know the quickstart and thus not fully what you know about the system, but i know the system very well and have played more of it these last few years than all other systems combined. As such i hope i can help you with your questions and to help you understand the system better and make a proper judgment of it.

The very first thing i will say is that you have found the wrong quickstart. Rather than Tomb of the Five Corners, i would advice that you use Return to the Tomb of Five Corners (http://download.white-wolf.com/download/download.php?file_id=509) which is the second edition quickstart. Not only do most people who have played both find the second edition to be the better by a fair margin, they also had a cleared view of what they want the system and the setting to be and can thus present it in a more coherent fashion. I also believe that the editing of second edition books is overall better than that of first edition books.

I will start with the last of your questions, that being the one about stunts. The way i am used to this being handled is by providing descriptions that cover far from everything at the scene and then letting the players improvise. Of course that does not mean that they can add whatever they want to it, there just shouldn't be a bucket of pitch and a broom in the king's bedroom or an expensive painting in the toolshed of a barbarian tribe far from civilization. At least not without a very good explanation. So it is a balance between accepting what they come up with and keeping it reasonable for what you want the location to be.

The next i will answer is about health. Combat in Exalted by and large focuses on not being hit. Quick and easy healing is hard to come by and like you have noticed people tend not to have much health to withstand a hit with. As for there being health levels and health points and no explanation of the difference there is a really simple explanation. There is no such thing as health points and it is a mistake of editing if it says that there is. Everyone has seven health levels to start with and can only get more if they purchase the charm Ox-Body Technique. As such the trick is to avoid getting hit and having really heavy armor if you do.

As for the difference between abilities and skills it really, really should be explained in the quickstart, at least the second edition one should explain all of the relevant abilities for each character, but i can explain your specific questions. Manipulation is how well you socially deal with others in a dishonest fashion. Lies, misdirection, omissions and so on all rely on manipulation rather than charisma. Intelligence is how smart you are, plain and simple. Wits on the other hand is a measure of how well you think on your feet and adapt to situations. In regards to skills, black boxes means that the skill is a caste or favored ability, which is a measure of how easy they are to improve using experience. And what melee does is that it governs how well you hit someone with a melee weapon. Martial arts is how well you hit them using hands, feet and some special weapons.

I hope i was of at least a little help, though i believe that Return to the Tomb of Five Corners should hold all the information you need to run it. For character generation, basic setting information and rules for improving your characters you need to look at the core book itself, however. I will strongly encourage you to buy it if you think that over the top heroes and cinematic descriptions are at all appealing and have no problem dealing with fairly rules heavy systems.

Weimann
2009-05-04, 09:51 AM
Thank you for clearing those points out. It helped a lot to look at the other demo adventure you linked as well, and I believe I'll be playing that one instead, as it explains the rules a lot better, even if I think it makes combat a bit more complicated than before. Social combat seem an interesting concept, and while it seems to require quite some preparation, it'll be interesting to see how it works out.

There are still some things I tangle with, though, and a little more help would be great.

It states in the rules that greater damage always push down lesser damage (i.e, lethal pushes bashing down) in the damage tracking box. Would that mean that bashing damage always end up below every level of lethal and aggrivated damage? For example, having 2L damage and recieving 2B more, would the bashing damage slip in under the lethal damage, or would it end up on top? The way I read the rules, newly acquired lethal damage would push down old bashing damage, but it doesn't explicitly say that newly acquired bahing damage "slips under" old lethal damage. How does that work?

On the Stunt rule, the idea of allowing the character to add items to the scene is a good one (TV Tropes called it Schrödinger's Gun ^^). However, I'm a bit confused on what constraints are on the Stunt rule, since many cool things are also really, really hard to do.

Let's say there's a guy in my party who is down on street level in a narrow alley, chasing a criminal, but has currently lost him. He then sees him on top of a low building to the right of him. The player decides he wants to perform a walljump, that is, jump off from the ground to the right wall, spring off it onto the left wall, and repeat the procedure towards the right wall again, only that he is now at the right height and lands on the roof, in front of the criminal.

The action, in itself, is a really cool thing that speak of serious badassness, so it would be worth a 2 or 3 bonus. However, it would also be ridiculously hard. I'd personally judge it a Strength (or maybe Dexterity?)+Jump roll with a difficulty of 5. On one end, it's cool, so it's a Stunt, on the other, it's hard enough to almost impossible to do withOUT Stunting. Is it something I've missed here, or does it seem like the difficult and the stunt take out each other and really only amount to reducing the action to a difficulty of 3 or 2?

Edit: I guess what I'm asking above is if the inherent awesomeness in performing a sufficiently hard action is enough to warrant a Stunt bonus? It's like the very fact that an action is hard to perform makes it easier, since hard => rare => cool, and that's not really the purpose of the rule, is it?

Terraoblivion
2009-05-04, 10:19 AM
You are right, damage of a lower level slips under on the chart. There are two reasons for this, both making you more survivable. The first is that it makes that lethal damage gained after bashing damage no worse than lethal damage gained before bashing damage. The other is that it makes healing faster, as you don't have to wait for a slowly healing aggravated or lethal level before you can heal your bashing damage. So the least lethal damage will always be at the bottom of the damage chart and thus heal first and bashing damage+lethal exceeding your amount of health levels will not kill you unless there is enough bashing damage to wrap over completely into lethal. Or the attack deals enough lethal damage to kill you outright.

As for stunts the coolness of the description is what matters, not how technically hard the action is to perform. Part of what this means is that you gain no bonus to crafting a five dot artifact if you just say "i work on the artifact", but you will if you describe how you forge the footsteps of cats, the roots of the mountains and the beard of women, cooling it in the dew gathered of the tallest trees in the farthest east. It is all in the description of your action whether you gain a bonus or not.

As for you example of scaling a wall using walljumps, i believe that the intended solution and the one i would use if i was the GM was to set a difficulty on the dexterity+athletics roll to scale the wall and then treating walljumps just like i would treat ordinary climbing and then judge the stunt bonus based on how cool the player makes it sound. I know that other GMs treat it in different ways, however.

Kyeudo
2009-05-04, 10:28 AM
It states in the rules that greater damage always push down lesser damage (i.e, lethal pushes bashing down) in the damage tracking box. Would that mean that bashing damage always end up below every level of lethal and aggrivated damage? For example, having 2L damage and recieving 2B more, would the bashing damage slip in under the lethal damage, or would it end up on top? The way I read the rules, newly acquired lethal damage would push down old bashing damage, but it doesn't explicitly say that newly acquired bahing damage "slips under" old lethal damage. How does that work?


The old damage does "slip under" the old damage. Your damage track will always go agravated damage to lethal damage to bashing damage. Do remember that any bashing damage pushed off the track wraps back around to turn a bashing damage level to lethal.



Let's say there's a guy in my party who is down on street level in a narrow alley, chasing a criminal, but has currently lost him. He then sees him on top of a low building to the right of him. The player decides he wants to perform a walljump, that is, jump off from the ground to the right wall, spring off it onto the left wall, and repeat the procedure towards the right wall again, only that he is now at the right height and lands on the roof, in front of the criminal.

The action, in itself, is a really cool thing that speak of serious badassness, so it would be worth a 2 or 3 bonus. However, it would also be ridiculously hard. I'd personally judge it a Strength (or maybe Dexterity?)+Jump roll with a difficulty of 5. On one end, it's cool, so it's a Stunt, on the other, it's hard enough to almost impossible to do withOUT Stunting. Is it something I've missed here, or does it seem like the difficult and the stunt take out each other and really only amount to reducing the action to a difficulty of 3 or 2?


Difficulty 5 is for things of legendary difficulty, like doing a wall jump with two broken legs while on fire. That wall jump would be more like difficulty 3, which is very hard for mere mortals but Exalts skate through with ease more often than not.

What you'd do to handle this situation is have him roll his Strength+Athletics and add whatever stunt dice you gave him to that to see if he can make it. A stunt doesn't grant automatic success with hard tasks, just makes them more possible.

FatR
2009-05-04, 12:04 PM
The action, in itself, is a really cool thing that speak of serious badassness, so it would be worth a 2 or 3 bonus. However, it would also be ridiculously hard. I'd personally judge it a Strength (or maybe Dexterity?)+Jump roll with a difficulty of 5. On one end, it's cool, so it's a Stunt, on the other, it's hard enough to almost impossible to do withOUT Stunting. Is it something I've missed here, or does it seem like the difficult and the stunt take out each other and really only amount to reducing the action to a difficulty of 3 or 2?
Stunts, despite indications to the contrary in higly confusing descriptions, have no mechanical effects besides extra dice and Essence/Willpower by RAW. If you can't do something normally, well, you fail with a flowery description. In fact, as 1-2 extra dice don't mean jack above heroic mortal level (you can easily pull 15+ without spending resources and 25+ with spending them as a starting character), stunts only matter for Essence/Willpower regeneration. Maybe for non-contested uses of Abilities you left really low.

However, in this particular case, an athletic character often can jump right to the roof, because jumping really high is one of the athletic feats that the system sets to highly cinematic/superheroic level by default. If he can't, well, a nearly imposible task is Difficulty 4. Because things like balance are set to realistic level without Charms.


Edit: I guess what I'm asking above is if the inherent awesomeness in performing a sufficiently hard action is enough to warrant a Stunt bonus? It's like the very fact that an action is hard to perform makes it easier, since hard => rare => cool, and that's not really the purpose of the rule, is it?
Between actual difficulty and external penalties, a stunt bonus very rarely does enough to make a hard action not hard. In cases when it is actually relevant, you can look at it as a reward for risk.

Kyeudo
2009-05-04, 01:23 PM
Ignore FatR. He hates on Exalted like mad.

In fact, the rules do call out that you can do the normally impossible as part of a stunt and stunt dice matter for more than Essence/Willpower regeneration. A few stunt dice can be the difference between a deadly blow and a complete miss, especially at non-Solar levels of combat.

Weimann
2009-05-04, 07:16 PM
Heh, thank you for the warning, Kyeudo. Still, he does have a point in that I probably look at the characters on a way to human level. On further inspection, it seems that one of them can indeed jump about 5 yards straight up in the air without any skill check and without using charms when unhurt, and that could probably be enough to skip onto a smaller cottage. I really need to get a better feeling for them :P

Also, thanks for the clarification on stunts there, Terraoblivion. It helped a lot.

However, I think I have the damage system down now. I've started reading on combat and the actions you can take in combat, and there's a few details that bother me.

1) Move has a speed ("cooldown") of 0, that is, you can use it on two subsequent ticks. It also seems to be a free action; moving a full distance won't prevent performing another action that same tick. However, can you move the tick after performing another action, or must you stand still while you are on cooldown?

2) Similarly Dash (3/-2) states in it's description that you may use it to move a slightly longer distance than Move every tick. Shouldn't that be every three ticks?

Also, the description implies that Dash is a free action, but that the DV modifier from Dash remains until the cooldown of the other taken action is up. Is this correctly understood?

A minor thought: if Dash has a cooldown on 3 ticks, wouldn't it be more efficient to just use move? 3 Moves greatly outdoes 1 Dash, and Dash would only be better if you really had to go those 6 extra yards now.

3) When making an attack, you roll a dice pool of (Accuracy-wound penalty). Then the attacked gets to defend. When she does, do you subtract the whole DV value from the attack, or do you roll a dice pool of DV and subtract the successes?

Also, the rules state that you should use your highest DV between parry and dodge, but surely you must be able to wilfully choose the other one, should you wish? That could be more obvious in social combat, since in physical combat, the results are largely the same (no damage is done) but in social combat, dodging means ignoring the argument of your opponent, while parrying means trying to turn it around (at least that's how I understood things).

4) More of a check to see if I've understood or not than a real question, but still. When using a First Excellency Charm, you gain 1 extra dice per mote spent. However, the First Excellency (Melee) doesn't only affect the Melee skill, but also the attacks made with melee weapons, where no real Melee skill check is ever required. Not only the skill checks are affected, but also the actions related to those skills, even if the actual skill check is not involved.

Hehe, I know, I know. I should just buy the source book :P

Terraoblivion
2009-05-04, 07:41 PM
I'll go through your questions one by one.

1. Move is essentially free to do, you can perform your action before, during or after you move. The only restriction on move is that you can only do it once a tick.

2. In regards to dash you do indeed move you dash speed every tick. However, you cannot perform another action until three ticks after you've started a dash, even if you don't move the full speed of it. So you move faster than by moving, but the price is DV penalty and that you cannot abort it as easily.

3. You subtract the full DV value minus any penalties that might apply to it, typically at least one due to the target having acted themselves. You also get to choose which DV to use, but will usually pick the better one. The choice is open, though.

4. Attacks using melee weapons are about the only melee skill check you will ever make. I can't deny that there can be situations where you will use something else, but overall it is just your attacks that are melee skill checks. The reason they are not called that is because there is a whole host of various other modifiers involved and it is tied into a more complex system that it is always used for. And excellencies work for any roll based on a given skill, no matter what the roll is called.

monty
2009-05-04, 08:03 PM
Glad to see someone else is having trouble with this. Maybe I should play in a game before I try DMing it...

Yuki Akuma
2009-05-04, 08:04 PM
By the time you're throwing out fifteen dice every time you swing your sword, you're not going to be using stunts for a measly 1 to 3 extra dice.

You're going to be using stunts to regain Willpower. After all, you spend Willpower every time you use a combo - which, by the time you're throwing fifteen dice around every time, you are definitely using once per round.

Lochar
2009-05-04, 10:37 PM
Dex 4, weapon 4, accuracy 2, specialty 2. That's 12, without even making the melee character uber focused. Throw in first excellency for another two dice, a one die stunt gets you your motes back, and you're rolling 14 dice without a combo.

Weimann
2009-05-05, 04:26 AM
1. Move is essentially free to do, you can perform your action before, during or after you move. The only restriction on move is that you can only do it once a tick.Mmm... I understand that in the same tick, Move can be combined with any other action in any way you want to, since it's a free action. But does it work again the next tick? Performing an action should, according to the rules, render you incapable of acting until (Speed) ticks later. Can I assume Move is an exception to that?
2. In regards to dash you do indeed move you dash speed every tick. However, you cannot perform another action until three ticks after you've started a dash, even if you don't move the full speed of it. So you move faster than by moving, but the price is DV penalty and that you cannot abort it as easily.This is a little confusing. Here's the description of Dash.

[b]Dash (3/-2): Characters may sprint ([Dexterity+6]-[wound penalty+armour mobility penalty]) yards per tick (minimum 2 yards). Though a character may abort a Dash and perform another action at any point during a Dash, DV does not refresh until the end of the action following the Dash. characters may not Move and Dash on the same tick.

Those two parts in italics don't seem to agree.

Trying to bring these two descriptions together, the way I read it is as follows: a character may perform the Dash action. She will then move ([Dexterity+6]-[wound penalty+armour mobility penalty]) yards per tick for 3 ticks, while suffering a -2 DV penalty. At any point during these 3 ticks, even after having moved the entire distance for that tick, she may perform another action, which will interrupt her Dashing. The next round, she may Move again as usual (since moving is a free action that ignores cooldown, according to the reasoning above, something that Dash does not), but will suffer a -2 DV penalty until the cooldown of her latest action is up.

I can't really put it together any other way :/

Weimann
2009-05-08, 04:49 AM
Also, one thing about "degrading intimacies" as a result of taking social damage. I find that phrase in the rules, but I can find no explanation to it whatsoever. What does it actually mean?

banjo1985
2009-05-08, 05:15 AM
"Intimacies" in Exalted are concepts, ideals, or things that the character holds dear. If, in social combat, an opponent makes the character doubt one of these concepts, or outright prooves them to be false, then that Intimacy becomes less important to the character.

I'm afraid I'm not in a position to flick through my rulebook, but intimacies have effects ingame in terms of dice pool bonuses in certain situations and such like, depending on how important the intimacy is to the character. So a degraded intimacy gives the character less of a bonus.

Hida Reju
2009-05-08, 05:26 AM
Exalted is the ultimate form of RPG Rocket tag.

In any combat on Solar or lunar exalted lvl you can bet that the first person to make a charm or serious attack connect, will without a perfect defense of somekind cause the body of the target to explode Fist of the North Star like.

Social combat is no different, there are exalted that can force people to worship them. Lie so perfectly that no one can ever find them wrong. You get the point.

In essence you start the game at Greek Demigod lvl and accend from there. Oh and most mortals die just from being present in an exalted fight from auras alone.

Oslecamo
2009-05-08, 07:07 AM
Social combat is no different, there are exalted that can force people to worship them. Lie so perfectly that no one can ever find them wrong. You get the point.


You do realize that there's and there was people on the real world wich can do the above just fine don't you?

You don't need to be superhuman/divine/whatever to convince people to dance to your music or even lay down their lifes for you. You just need to be really good with words and at understanding other people's desires and fears(or even easier, creating them).

Terraoblivion
2009-05-08, 09:42 AM
No, only dragonblooded auras are lethal and they deal quite low damage with a short radius. I mean, yes, they are lethal, but most people will be able to get away before any serious damage has been caused.

And you are not right about people dying the moment they are hit. That becomes the consequence later on, but at the start you are unlikely to kill anybody outright if you hit them unless they are fairly scrawny and you are focused on pure damage.

Kylarra
2009-05-08, 10:11 AM
I'd honestly ignore social combat until you get more used to the system. The majority of people I've talked to about it, really don't like it.

Weimann
2009-05-08, 01:12 PM
A good idea, Kylarra, and I did consider it. In my demo adventure, the section where it is used consists of the geroes walking down an old temple with a disembodied voice taunting them, and if they win the social combat, it could, according to the adventure, replace the whole final boss battle. Which isn't a good thing. I think I will figure out some other solution to that section.

None the less, I realize I'll need more inclusive rules to fully understand social combat, so I think I'll avoid it to the greatest extent possible. Thanks for your help :)

danelsan
2009-05-08, 03:02 PM
Its a shame you weren't aware of the interesting marketing move White wolf made for the Exalted line a while ago, letting the core rulebook .pdf be downloaded for free...I should have put more effort in announcing that :smallfrown:


As for Social Combat. It can be really boring if you don't have the full rules. As far as I know, they didn't had the time or wordcount to really expand it, so you need the full thing to make it more interesting (charms that interact with it are also a plus). But in case you are curious, an Intimacy is anything the character feels strongly about, but is lesser than a Motivation (your driving goal in life)

So, you could have an Intimacy of Hate for your worst enemy, or an intimacy of love for your wife.

When someone makes a social attack against you, if these intimacies are involved, the they give you a +1 or -1 modifier to your mental DVs (so, a seductress trying to make you betray your wife must deal with your DV increased by one, while somebody trying to convince you to ambush your hated enemy would have you DV reduced by one)

As for degrading intimacies: a successful social attack against an Intimacy can once per scene reduce an Intimacy "level". each intimacy has a number of "levels" equal to the character's Conviction. Successful social attacks can also build new Intimacies (such as somebody making you fall in love with them). it also requires successful attacks and a number of scenes equal to your conviction.

You can also dedicate a scene to pursue an Intimacy if you want . Spending time with you recently discovered little brother - each scene getting you closer to form an Intimacy toward him. Or spend a time in a monastery learning lessons of forgiveness to lose the Intimacy of hate for somebody.
After a few successful attacks by that seductress that you didn't expend willpower to ignore, your love for your wife is shaken. You could take her in a romantic trip to rekindle your passion, each scene recovering a "level" of you Intimacy towards her.

I think that is the general info you needed on Intimacies.

Any other questions on Social combat?

Jerthanis
2009-05-09, 02:50 AM
Dex 4, weapon 4, accuracy 2, specialty 2. That's 12, without even making the melee character uber focused. Throw in first excellency for another two dice, a one die stunt gets you your motes back, and you're rolling 14 dice without a combo.

To be fair, noncombat rolls tend to lack equipment bonuses far more often, and feature specialties far rarer than combat abilities would. A person attempting to craft might have Perfect tools for +2, or a researcher might have a Perfect Library for +2 Lore, but I'd scoff at a player trying to get Perfect shoes to add +2 to Athletics or a Perfect Saddle for +2 Ride.

You start with 28 ability dots and there are 25 abilities... there are going to be times when your 2 die stunt accounts for an additional 66% of your normal pool. If a character could be "not uber focused" in half the abilities they will take in the course of a game the way you suggest they would be, then Exalts would be somehow more impressive than they are already.


I'd honestly ignore social combat until you get more used to the system. The majority of people I've talked to about it, really don't like it.

I agree with this, but to expand, once you are more intimate with the system in general, introduce the Social Combat mechanics slowly, and stop once you are comfortable.

My group started with no social combat whatsoever... we freeform RPed every scene that involved interpersonal conflict and resolved everything on ST arbitration. Then we introduced social mechanics only when Charms were used, and ignored the effects of Intimacy, virtues and motivation. When we were used to that, we began including intimacies and so on with Charm use. Then we slowly introduced Ability + Attribute (as decided by ST based on the form the words took, with appropriate stunt dice) vs MDV as a task resolution roll (bluffing the guard, convincing the trader ect, not for highly grandiose tasks). We tried introducing the "speed" of social actions and the Join Debate rules, but we backtracked hardcore on that issue... and now we are juuust trying out the idea of enemies who can spend willpower to refuse a single successful roll. I sort of see Social Combat as a system of opposed rolls to provide more granularity to success and failure in a social system, and utilize and tolerate it as such.

Weimann
2009-05-09, 03:54 PM
Thank you for explaining intimacies in a deeper fashion, danelsan. It helps knowing about them, but I don't think they'll come into play in my adventure. After all, it's only one short demo, and we still don't know if we will continue playing after we have finished it.