A game of simlair scope and scale as Exalted?

[Talkkno]

I really like the fluff, but the rules don't really make any sense to me.:smallfrown: despite combing threw the core book multiple times. and I'm hoping to find a system that has can accommodate as it.

[Tavar]

What exactly did you find confusing about the rules? I had that problem too, though it's gotten better with time.

That said, Hero could have the same feel, just use higher point values. I've heard Nobilis has an even more obscene power-level.

[Roland St. Jude]

Amber, if you like that setting/series.

[Tavar]

Amber, if you like that setting/series.

Do you mean the Diceless Role Playing Game? I've heard that it's good, but never been able to find it. Not sure if it has quite the same feel though.

[Green Bean]

Mutants and Masterminds has a similar power level and feel. The core books are focused on modern superhero settings, though so you may have to make adjustments.

[Glimbur]

Nobilis is also diceless. And you're gods. And the rule book is really hard to find. I know a group of people that seem to really enjoy it. Of course, the same can be said of many systems, so that's not a great endorsement.

[Roland St. Jude]

Do you mean the Diceless Role Playing Game? I've heard that it's good, but never been able to find it. Not sure if it has quite the same feel though.

Yeah, the DRPG. It's...not the same feel, though, obviously, it's Amber so it could be. It certainly has the walking (demi)gods feel, so I figured it fit the OPs "scope and scale" question. I've played with the system both tied to the canon and away from it. It works either way, but better with the setting, I think.

[Tavar]

And you're gods.
To clarify a bit: in this case, gods means that you're on the same level as the Unconquered Sun.

[StoryKeeper]

Well, you could try the Scion series by White Wolf. Once you get up to god tier, you can play catch with yourself by tossing a baseball around the earth. Seriously.

If I'm not mistaken, it uses similar rules to Exalted, so that might not be in your favor. I'm not sure about the rules thing, however as I kind of stopped reading Exalted before I got to the actual mechanics (so... much... setting information.)

[ZeroNumerous]

I'm not sure about the rules thing, however as I kind of stopped reading Exalted before I got to the actual mechanics (so... much... setting information.)

Exalted Mechanics are hardly any different than any other d10 system I've seen. As the saying goes: "Played on WW game, you've played them all."

[Doc Roc]

May I suggest to you the excellent but bah-ro-ken Dawn of Legends supplement for the Savage Worlds system? You'll need to push some numbers around, but it will let you go faster than light, run past a skyscraper, rip it from its concrete roots, cross the country, and smash it into the head of your foe like an improvised melee weapon.

[Talkkno]

What exactly did you find confusing about the rules? I had that problem too, though it's gotten better with time.


I didn't really understand the combat system, and the whole charm combo system seems very intimidating to create and keep track of. Then again I've had gotten 3.5 D&D so maybe i just need to get to try for it to get it.

[Artanis]

I didn't really understand the combat system, and the whole charm combo system seems very intimidating to create and keep track of. Then again I've had gotten 3.5 D&D so maybe i just need to get to try for it to get it.

It doesn't help that the Exalted corebook is, to put it mildly, poorly laid out. It's a lot easier once you get the hang of it, but a better layout would make getting to that point a lot quicker.

[Tavar]

Yeah, I only really started to get the system once I started playing it, especially when the other people were experienced with the system.

[Giegue]

D&D actually has rules/stats for gods. Though it may sound odd, you could allow PCs to use these stats and abilites if you wanted to play as a god. Of course, you would need to have enemies that could stand up to them, and there in lies the challange. You may want to make them only lesser level deities, to make things a bit more difficult. However, D&D's god rules could fit the bill. I have experance with them, and if you don't know them, look on the D20 hypertext site, it's a great resource for 3.5e and has all the divine/god rules, abilites and such listed and explained on it.

[Mando Knight]

The surface of the basic idea can be scratched by playing high-epic-level D&D. Maybe. Lunars would all have to be druids or Wildshape rangers, and the rest would be Wizards, Clerics, and other Tier 1/2 classes for 3.5. 4e would still require everyone agreeing to play with an "uber-epic" feel, but could be run with all of the classes instead.

It's mostly in the mindset, though the rules and default flavor of Exalted help its players automatically think "super-hyper-epic god-player filled game."

[Talkkno]

The problem I have with high level 3.5 D&D is that it gets extremely crumbsome and complex.

[imperialspectre]

Don't, under any circumstances, replace one WW game with another - if you're having trouble with Exalted, take it from me that it's actually the best of their work in terms of mechanics.

Amber and the Savage Worlds system Jake recommended are probably good options; 15th-level 3.5 or thereabouts gives you power levels that make most Exalted characters cry but tends to make combats even more drawn-out than Exalted combats.

[lesser_minion]

take it from me that it's actually the best of their work in terms of mechanics.

That seems very wrong to me. Why exactly do you think that?

As for the OP's question:

8th-12th level D&D might work, and there are a few people on Myth-Weavers who use the Anima: Beyond Fantasy roleplaying game (which might even be the closest thing to what you want). True20 is generic, but it should be possible to stretch it to cover the same power level as Exalted.

While nWoD is a lot better designed than Exalted, you'd have to do a lot of work to adapt the system, so I wouldn't recommend trying to use it. nWoD has a very simplistic combat system that wouldn't be very fun in a game like Exalted.

Unisystem could potentially work as well. You can grab one of the unisystem games (WitchCraft) for free from DrivethruRPG.

[Surgo]

If you like the fluff but the rules don't make any sense (not surprising, as they were never very good), the HERO system is probably the ruleset you're looking for. It does super-like characters extremely well (that's what it's designed for), and has the benefit of a long and mathematically rigorous development process. Despite the length of the book, the rules are actually straightforward (far easier to learn than D&D).

That said, the DM and players need to come to an agreement beforehand over what's allowed before building characters. That doesn't work for some people; if you don't think you and your group can manage that, the HERO system will not work for you.

[Moriato]

One game I had a lot of fun with, and wish I had a chance to play more, is Whispering Vault.

The concept is basically this: The gods are dreaming up reality, each one of them dreams a little piece of it, but they are NOT supposed to actually go down and hang around IN reality, they really muck things up when they do. That's where the players come in.

You ARE demigods, and your job is to police the gods themselves. When one of them breaks the rules and starts screwing things up, it's your job to go down, bind them, and bring them back.

You, as a player, have a lot of artistic license in the game. You get to decide exactly how you look, and all the "fluff" of your character, essentially. For example, one of the powers you might have is called "Rend" which allows you to make a ranged attack. How exactly that attack happens is left up to you, the book only says it should fit thematically with your character. Is he a scarred martyr covered in barbed chains? Well then maybe the chains lash out at your enemy. Is he a hulking cyborg? Well then maybe he fires a cannon out of his chest. It's all up to you.

It's very well suited for one-shots since a typical session goes "Get the call to action, go down to the world, find the god, beat him up, bind him, bring him back, rinse, repeat next session", but it's just as easy to string several of these encounters into a larger story.

The dice rolling system is interesting to me, too. Basically to preform an action you have a "die pool" similar to white wolf games, but Whispering Vault uses d6s rather than d10s. To figure out what you scored, you roll however many d6s you have for that skill (depends on your stats, of course) then you add up matching dice to get the highest number you can.

So for example lets say I have 5 dice to preform a certain action. I roll them and I get (2 5 4 4 6) Those two fours add up to 8, so I rolled an 8. A roll of (4 6 3 6 6) would be 18. If you rolled, let's say (2 2 1 3 6) that's a 6. You have two 2s but that's only 4 so you can just take the 6.

It takes a little while to get used to but it makes rolling just that much more fun, in my opinion.

Edit: The books, unfortunately, are out of print, but you can pick up the PDFs from Paizo

[Temet Nosce]

Well, they've already been covered but if you're looking for that level of play I would suggest either Nobilis or Amber DRPG.

Nobilis: It's bluntly my favorite RPG of all time. You take the role of an anthropomorphic representation of a concept (such as Death, Time, or Vengeance) in a setting with a complex society of such Nobles bound by rules (such as thou shalt not love). It uses an extremely simple diceless system, and honestly the power level is well above even Exalted (one of the example actions is shooting down the sun because you want some extra sleep in the morning).

Amber DRPG: I'm not so fond of this one, despite my liking the series. That said, it has an interesting feature called the attribute auction where you bid against other players to determine the rankings at the start of the game in each stat (even the lowest ranking is far above any Earth normal though unless you sell way down). It has some problems with power disparity among NPCs and I consider it a poor model of the Amber universe though.

[Tequila Sunrise]

The problem I have with high level 3.5 D&D is that it gets extremely crumbsome and complex.
I haven't totally wrapped my head around Exalted's rules either, so I'm running my current Exalted campaign using D&D 4e rules. It works surprisingly well; the setting provides an explanation for D&D's inherent power absurdity and the rules provide a familiar and very balanced structure to character advancement.

Of course my PCs don't have the same 'I casually annihilate any problem with my superman mojo' feel as they would under Exalted rules, but that's not what my group wants anyway. And I'm going to have to work up some nation building/tactical warfare rules when my PCs become leaders, but I enjoy the challenge. (Besides, I've heard that stuff is broken one way or another in Exalted, as are most of its systems.)

[Artanis]

Well, in Exalted, PCs only casually annihilate any mortal-scale problem. There's plenty of problems out there that can only be resolved by the application of large amounts of Awesome :smalltongue:

[The Rose Dragon]

There are five dot artifacts that allow casual genocide, though those are rare and require crapload of Essence. Also, they are all from the First Age. And one of them is a soulbreaker orb, which is like a spiritual nuclear warhead and should probably be used only in situations of MAD.

Also, most forms of genocide don't really work when you're fighting one giant behemoth of a Third Circle demon, which doesn't have any stats other than "rolls a minimum of about 20 dice in any situation", a few Charms that allows him to raise those higher, a few Charms that allows him to succeed at something, period, and a few special Charms that make it even more awesome.

Then again, it's not really the scale and scope of Exalted that makes it good, but rather how everything is put together.

I suggest Weapons of the Gods, incidentally. Which is another wuxia-inspired game (co-written by Exalted Second Edition co-writer Jenna Moran, or Rebecca Borgstrom) that is based on a comic book of the same name. For reference, wielding a 50-pound sword puts you on the low-end of the strength scale.

[Temet Nosce]

I suggest Weapons of the Gods, incidentally. Which is another wuxia-inspired game (co-written by Exalted Second Edition co-writer Jenna Moran, or Rebecca Borgstrom) that is based on a comic book of the same name. For reference, wielding a 50-pound sword puts you on the low-end of the strength scale.

Good catch. I had a vague feeling I was forgetting something but Weapons of the Gods comes up even less often than Nobilis (at least I obsess over Nobilis, even if I never get to play - though I'm finally involved in a Nobilis/WH40k crossover now... which feels weird given that I've been unable to find a normal Nobilis game up till now).

[Draxar]

I haven't totally wrapped my head around Exalted's rules either, so I'm running my current Exalted campaign using D&D 4e rules. It works surprisingly well; the setting provides an explanation for D&D's inherent power absurdity and the rules provide a familiar and very balanced structure to character advancement.

Of course my PCs don't have the same 'I casually annihilate any problem with my superman mojo' feel as they would under Exalted rules, but that's not what my group wants anyway. And I'm going to have to work up some nation building/tactical warfare rules when my PCs become leaders, but I enjoy the challenge. (Besides, I've heard that stuff is broken one way or another in Exalted, as are most of its systems.)

The issues with Exalted are things like what do you do in combat when both you and your enemy have Perfect Defenses, and the fact that there have been a lot of errors in the books (such as the poison that Wood aspected Terrestrials can make not actually being given stats). However, a lot of that has now, finally, been fixed ('Scroll of Errata (http://www.white-wolf.com/downloads.php?category_id=23)' puts said fixing all in one place).

Interestingly, Terrestrials do rather well as an introduction to Exalted through lower powered beings. They don't have the ability to casually rewrite societies, their one perfect defence does not override applicability (i.e. it's a dodge that cannot dodge the undodgeable, unlike the celestials charms, which can), the starting point is that you're a powerful being in culture where you share running the place with lots of other similarly powerful beings, you have cool toys and you're not being constantly hunted down for the mere act of existence.



Well, in Exalted, PCs only casually annihilate any mortal-scale problem. There's plenty of problems out there that can only be resolved by the application of large amounts of Awesome :smalltongue:

Starting PCs only casually annihilate any mortal scale problem. Given time, killing hordes of demons or indeed, Dragonblooded becomes relatively doable. I mean, at Essence 5 (achieveable without being X age, and a Solar can start at 4), there's a charm that says "I automatically deflect any attack that is neither perfect nor unblockable for a scene" (the latter includes unexpected.

[Talkkno]

There are five dot artifacts that allow casual genocide, though those are rare and require crapload of Essence. Also, they are all from the First Age. And one of them is a soulbreaker orb, which is like a spiritual nuclear warhead and should probably be used only in situations of MAD.

It's only one shot weapon though, then again it is suggested that first age workshops it only took a day to assemble one of them. It kind makes it silly that it would take 6 months to make measily warstrider by comprasion. >>



I suggest Weapons of the Gods, incidentally. Which is another wuxia-inspired game (co-written by Exalted Second Edition co-writer Jenna Moran, or Rebecca Borgstrom) that is based on a comic book of the same name. For reference, wielding a 50-pound sword puts you on the low-end of the strength scale.
Thanks I'll look into that.

[Tavar]

Well, how fast could first age workshops make it? Also, there are alot of factors that could influence build times: for instance, if once consists of alot of highly machined parts, it could take alot longer.

[The Demented One]

Exalted Mechanics are hardly any different than any other d10 system I've seen. As the saying goes: "Played on WW game, you've played them all."
Hahaha. You make me smile.

[Tequila Sunrise]

Well, in Exalted, PCs only casually annihilate any mortal-scale problem. There's plenty of problems out there that can only be resolved by the application of large amounts of Awesome :smalltongue:
Heh, well, most of what I remember from my Exalted conversion thread is half the posters telling me that D&D characters don't properly reflect the awesomeness of the solar exalted. In particular I remember a comment about killing a king from a mile away with a dart or something.


The issues with Exalted are things like what do you do in combat when both you and your enemy have Perfect Defenses, and the fact that there have been a lot of errors in the books (such as the poison that Wood aspected Terrestrials can make not actually being given stats). However, a lot of that has now, finally, been fixed ('Scroll of Errata' puts said fixing all in one place).
Thanks. I'm hoping to meet someone IRL who has Exalted experience and can get enthusiastic about storytelling a game. I could do it myself but meh...I already know D&D. I've tried a pbp, but just can't keep my head in online games.

[The Demented One]

Well, how fast could first age workshops make it? Also, there are alot of factors that could influence build times: for instance, if once consists of alot of highly machined parts, it could take alot longer.
Anyone who's remotely trying can make artifacts really freakin' fast. Craftsman Needs No Tools is godly. "Highly machined parts" have nothing to do with anything, the system doesn't care about that. It cares about gathering frozen lightning from the distant North and forging the souls of your enemies into steel.

[Talkkno]

Just a quick question, is Weapons of the Gods, is it possible to build archtypes simliar to the Zenith, Dawn, Twilight, Night, and Escplise castes of the Solar exalted?