Exalted into NWoD: A madman's dream.

[Leeham]

So I had this idea of writing up some Exalted material using the World of Darkness rules. Does anybody have any advice? (Other than don't bother, that kind of attitude just doesn't help anyone.) I've had an idea for some Noun: the Gerund style names as well, such as Solars: the Return.

Any advice/opinions welcome :smallsmile:

[The Rose Dragon]

There was some heavy-duty work that ultimately got nowhere on the White Wolf forums, which might be worth checking out.

[Leliel]

Well, I once tried to stat up the Eldritch Abominations in Predator as the living prisons of the Celestial Incarna, but then I ran into my incompetence with stats.

[wayfare]

One of the first things I did after NWoD hit the shelves!

The first thing I would suggest is making key system change to preserve the Heroic feel of the Exalted-verse. Specifically: Allow defense to apply to all attacks (melee or ranged). Can regular folks dodge bullets -- no. Can Wuxia heroes do so -- absolutely!

Once that is taken care of, a plenum of options await you!

I suppose the 1st thing to decide is how you want Exalted to fit in with NWoD. Would this be a book that interacts with the other supernaturals of the WoD, or is this a separate thing? If you want to preserve the NWoD monsters, decide where you want them relative to the power of a Solar.

As for the core rules, here are a few modifications that have worked for me:

Essence is the energy statistic of the game, following the pattern established in mage:

Essence Rating Max Essence Spent Per Round

1 10/1
2 11/2
3 12/3
4 13/4
5 14/5

The biggest advantage the exalted have over other supernaturals is their ability to respire essence: instead of regaining essence through rituals and whatnot, the exalted regain essence at a constant rate. I found that allowing a Resolve + Composure roll at a set interval worked nicely: every success restores 1 Essence. For Solars, Dawn, Noon and Dusk are pretty nice times to regain essence.

In my experience, the hardest part of the game is assigning Caste skills with the NWoD skills. Some strange hybrid may be necessary, though how you might manage it is a bit beyond me.
My solution was pretty inelegant: each Caste has 2 Favored Skills and could choose 2 other skills to be favored.

I simplified excellencies to a certain degree: exalted could spend essence on their favored skills without learning charms to generate the following effects:

1 Essence: Re-roll a favored skill
1 Essence: Add your essence rating in dice to a favored skill
1 Essence: Roll your essence rating and apply the successes asd a bonusto a Defense attribute.

Beyond that, I designed 5 set Charm Trees for each skill, like the powers is each of the books. Your rating in the skill capped the level of charms you could access.

Hope this was of some use to you!

[Kallisti]

Noun: the Gerund

This needs to exist.

Afraid I don't have anything too helpful to contribute, but the way I understand it, isn't Exalted already Storyteller System? What are the big differences that make it incompatible as it stands?

[The Glyphstone]

I believe Exalted is Storyteller System, but based on the OWoD engine. It still uses concepts like soak, for one thing, which NWoD did away with.

[SurlySeraph]

@The Rose Dragon: Do you have a link? I can't find it.

Also, I certainly support this concept.

Other than that...
Instead of Soak, maybe Exalts automatically have Armor against bludgeoning damage equal to Stamina, and against lethal damage equal to 1/2 Stamina. That makes Stamina kind of a god-stat, though; halving those bonuses might be better.
The 8/6/4 stat spread Exalts get seems good.
28 skill points, divided at will, would be fine to stay with. In Exalted, Heroic Mortals get 25 and normal mortals get 18; in NWoD, starting characters get 22. The way that averages out works nicely. Add 3 or more free specialties. You could have stacking specialties in the same thing (e.g. Swords +3) be a thing Exalts can do, or drop that.
Virtues... could just be dropped, though that would be boring. Maybe make them something Exalts have in place of the normal Virtue/ Vice system?

Possible Ability -> Skill conversions, if you want to use NWoD skills:
Archery -> Firearms
Athletics
Awareness ->removed, its Charms are now Composure-based or Wits-based.
Bureaucracy -> Politics
Craft
Dodge -> Folded into Athletics
Integrity ->
Investigation
Larceny
Linguistics is removed, its Charms split between other social skills
Lore -> folded into Occult
Martial Arts -> Brawl
Medicine
Melee -> Weapons
Occult
Performance
Presence
Resistance -> removed, its Charms are now Stamina-based
Ride -> folded into Drive
Sail -> folded into Drive
Socialize
Stealth
Survival
Thrown
War

[The Rose Dragon]

Afraid I don't have anything too helpful to contribute, but the way I understand it, isn't Exalted already Storyteller System? What are the big differences that make it incompatible as it stands?

Obscure White Wolf System Trivia Powers, activate!

There are two basic systems White Wolf uses, Storyteller and Storytelling. Classic World of Darkness uses Storyteller, as do Aberrant and Trinity. Exalted and Scion use a modified version of Storyteller, but it is still obviously Storyteller. On the other hand, New World of Darkness uses Storytelling, which is not used by any book outside of New World of Darkness, even though a few ideas slip into those books released afterward, such as Scion and Exalted 2nd Edition. Storyteller and Storytelling system are only superficially similar, with their guidelines being mostly different.

[Kallisti]

Obscure White Wolf System Trivia Powers, activate!

There are two basic systems White Wolf uses, Storyteller and Storytelling. Classic World of Darkness uses Storyteller, as do Aberrant and Trinity. Exalted and Scion use a modified version of Storyteller, but it is still obviously Storyteller. On the other hand, New World of Darkness uses Storytelling, which is not used by any book outside of New World of Darkness, even though a few ideas slip into those books released afterward, such as Scion and Exalted 2nd Edition. Storyteller and Storytelling system are only superficially similar, with their guidelines being mostly different.

OK. Thank you.

So there are significant rules differences? Hmmm. I'm sure someone's done a guide on oWoD to nWoD, which would have to go Storyteller->Storytelling; could such a thing be repurposed to convert Exalted to Storytelling, or are the rules differences too severe?

[SurlySeraph]

A lot of the basics, like dice pools, rolling Attribute + Skill, etc. are the same. There are a lot of pretty big differences, most of which are things in Exalted that are more complicated than they are in NWoD. Soak, Hardness, having both Dodge and Parry DVs instead of just Defense, external and internal penalties being different things (in NWoD, all penalties are what Exalted calls internal penalties), flurries (rules in Exalted that let you take multiple actions per turn), etc.

There are also things that are different but can't just be easily cut or simplified down, like how the Attributes and Skills are different, the different Virtue systems, the different way attacks are resolved (waaay simpler in NWoD), and how in Exalted the number you need to roll on a die to get a success is 7, whereas in NWoD it's 8. For those, decisions need to be made.

It's also necessary to change a lot in the Charm trees (Exalted powers), since some of them are based on attributes or skills that don't exist in NWoD or otherwise don't mesh well. They can be worked in, it just takes some doing.

Someone will also need to mostly rewrite all the Charms you want to include; many of them are "exception-based," meaning they change how the rules normally work, lots and lots of them are about on things that don't work the same way in NWoD (like Soak or extra actions), and a lot of them aren't very well-balanced within Exalted itself; so trying to just apply a couple simple formulas to convert them won't produce great results.
Some good general guidelines might be:
Keep the Excellencies pretty much as they are.
Have Extra Action charms provide extra attacks like certain NWoD Fighting Styles do.
Replace Soak with Armor. Things that ignore soak become Armor Piercing.
Either ignore Hardness entirely or replace mentions of it with Armor, since there isn't really a good analogue for it in NWoD. Or maybe have it downgrade lethal damage to bashing and negate bashing damage.
Have undodgeable or unblockable attacks just halve the target's Defense.
Have undodgeable *and* unblockable attacks ignore Defense, but not Armor. Same with unexpected attacks, and perfect attacks.


I'm pretty sure there *is* a OWod -> NWoD conversion guide out there, I think even an officially published one, which would speed things up a lot. I am too lazy to look for it at the moment.

[Morph Bark]

This needs to exist.

Yes. Too bad that the last parts usually aren't gerunds. :smalltongue:

[The Glyphstone]

Lost (adjective)
Dreaming (verb)
Requiem (noun)
Masquerade (noun)
Awakening (verb)
Ascension (noun)
Sin-Eaters (noun)
Apocalypse (noun)
Forsaken (adjective)
Fallen (adjective)
Created (adjective)
Vigil (noun)
Oblivion (noun)
Reckoning (verb)
Resurrection (verb)

4 verbs, 4 adjectives, 6 nouns. So the majority would be Creature: The Noun.

[The Rose Dragon]

Resurrection is not a verb, it is a noun. Resurrect is a verb.

Also, Dreaming, Awakening and Reckoning are gerunds, rather than verbs. Reckon, Dream and Awaken would be verbs.

[The Glyphstone]

I was classifying those by their pre-suffix form, because the joke is lost if you don't randomly stick "ing' on the end of it afterwards. Also, I don't know what a gerund is.

[The Rose Dragon]

I was classifying those by their pre-suffix form, because the joke is lost if you don't randomly stick "ing' on the end of it afterwards.

Then Ascension would be as much a verb as Resurrection, since they are both built the same way.

[Morph Bark]

I was classifying those by their pre-suffix form, because the joke is lost if you don't randomly stick "ing' on the end of it afterwards. Also, I don't know what a gerund is.

A gerund is basically a verb ending in -ing that is used as a noun. Like: I am very good at learning.

But even with the changes that TRD noted, nouns would still be most prominent. It'd be Noun: The Noun. (I'd argue though, that something called Verb: The Noun would be perfect for being centered around Grammar Nazi-like mystical creatures that use gerund-based powers.)

In fact, since the topic here is Exalted, that makes me think of a new kind of Exalted dedicated to Truenaming. :smalltongue:

[Kallisti]

Verb: The Noun would be perfect for being centered around Grammar Nazi-like mystical creatures that use gerund-based powers.)

Noun: the Gerund is a better name, though. But either way, it needs to exist and it needs to use this premise. People with the template can be called Editors. It'll be fantastic.

[SurlySeraph]

In fact, since the topic here is Exalted, that makes me think of a new kind of Exalted dedicated to Truenaming. :smalltongue:

There's a Yozi for that. (http://forums.white-wolf.com/cs/forums/p/39762/848189.aspx)

[Triscuitable]

I was classifying those by their pre-suffix form, because the joke is lost if you don't randomly stick "ing' on the end of it afterwards. Also, I don't know what a gerund is.

Are we seriously arguing about verbs and nouns?

Alright, you know what, just to make this argument invalid, I'm going to create Verbalessence: The Nouning. It will have living TEXT NOUNING STUFF.

[SurlySeraph]

I think I found that conversion The Rose Dragon mentioned. Rules here (http://www.mediafire.com/?gliptvui97h0pvf), Solar Charms here (http://www.mediafire.com/?dx0bku5uarbq4nt), some discussion here. (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=560159&page=2)

[Teln]

some discussion here. (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=560159&page=2)

Something's gone wrong with this link. All I get is a "Content Encoding Error" when I click on it.

EDIT: Never mind, it seems that rpg.net is having some major forum issues at the moment.

[Leeham]

Mwahahahaha! Thank you all very much!