PDA

View Full Version : Exalted: Is it worth getting?



banjo1985
2008-01-25, 07:04 AM
I am a big fan of the World of Darkness Roleplaying system, and have recently become aware of the Exalted roleplaying system, which I've been told uses very similar rules.

I have been looking for a system that could handle a fantasy campaign for a long time, apart from DnD, which is solid, but not really suited to the setting I want to run a campaign for. My setting is a highish-tech fantasy world, if anyone's played the Enchanted Arms videogame, that's roughly what I'm aiming for. I've seen a few things about Exalted and I think it could be a good system to adapt to my needs.

Has anyone played Exalted? How similar is it to the WoD rules? Does it lend itself easily to setting modifications? Basically, I'd just like to gather some knowledgable opinions on the setting before I shell out for it, as I'd rather not sling more money at a system I'll never use (Savage Worlds I'm looking at you!)

Thanks in advance

leperkhaun
2008-01-25, 07:12 AM
Its fun. its playstyle is more....anime i guess. Only thing I found is that the books have a poor layout. Iv found it hard to find things in the book as the information is all over the place.

Rutee
2008-01-25, 09:31 AM
The system at it's face is more similar. Anime is the wrong word, however; It's more epic and more wuxia the the World of Darkness, by far. It works similarly mechanically, at its core, with three notable differences.
1. You don't have to roll dice to cross the street :smallyuk:
2. You need buckets of dice to handle mid-power+ Solars. No smiley, that's actual fact.
3. You receive mechanical bonuses for behaving in an awesome fashion (Referred to as stunts).

Rule of Cool is, by far, the most important part. Yeah, you could adapt it to other settings, honestly. The crunch works regardless. Given what you seem to be going for, Exalted should work.

Oh, and going by the base book, newbies are /awesome/. That's pretty important. The average Heroic Mortal is nowhere near as good as a newbie Solar, for instance. Just not on an even vaguely similar playing field. You could scale down, but it'd be hard. Bear in mind that even a starting Solar is supposed to be at the least good enough to be famous (If they wanted to be) in quite a few fields, with the capacity to be one of the world's leading <X>, where X is whatever field they wish to max out. No idea how that matches your intent.

banjo1985
2008-01-25, 09:59 AM
This sounds good. The epic-ness of the characters wouldn't be too much of a problem, the players will be students at a prestigious combat-oriented university and therefore are a fair bet against any random human, or even an experienced trained opponent.

The style aspect sounds interesting, and will please the power hungry gamers in my group, while hopefully I'll be able to provide an engaging enough world and base plot to interest everyone else.

If the crunch works through my adaptation to my setting then I'll be happy, and from what you say it sounds likely. My players are also experienced with the WoD rules which will probably help things along.

Darrin
2008-01-25, 10:38 AM
Has anyone played Exalted? How similar is it to the WoD rules? Does it lend itself easily to setting modifications? Basically, I'd just like to gather some knowledgable opinions on the setting before I shell out for it, as I'd rather not sling more money at a system I'll never use

I'm not intimately familiar with the latest edition, but Exalted is WoD "turned up to 11". I sometimes get the feeling that it was designed for people who thought rolling 20d6 in Shadow Run just "wasn't enough dice". Lots of fun if you've got a group that gets off on clever descriptions, but in the wrong hands gets broken very quickly.

The setting was fairly amorphous, with the world map quite large enough to fit in any kind of campaign setting you could think up. That's one of the great advantages of most WoD-type settings, plenty of room to do your own thing. One sticking point might be if you needed to retrofit any of the "cosmology" stuff, such as the different types of Exalted, where they get their powers, and the different types of antagonists. WW tends to leave these both vaguely defined and yet difficult to customize.

Indon
2008-01-25, 10:52 AM
I like the system. The system is very much solid and it's pretty moddable (I have a friend who is working on a conversion for Exalted into the Mortal Kombat universe :P).

One thing to bear in mind when you get books, though: There are two editions. If it doesn't say "Second edition" or something to that effect on the cover, it's a first edition book. I play the first edition and have little experience with the second ed., but I do have the Lunar book for 2'nd edition lying around collecting dust because of a mixup like that.

Fax Celestis
2008-01-25, 11:54 AM
You want high-tech fantasy? Then I'd recommend the Alchemicals book. It's a good game with some pretty solid mechanics. It's also either pretty easy or pretty hard to break depending on who you play with and what you play against. If you fight other Exalts and everyone in your group doesn't decide to gimp their characters, then it's actually pretty balanced.

Artanis
2008-01-25, 12:38 PM
I really enjoyed the Exalted campaign I was in that recently went on hiatus. It lends itself to setting modifications fairly well in that the setting is officially so godd*** huge that you can do pretty much whatever you want with it just by going somewhere "over yonder". Seriously, they go out of their way to tell you how big the place is.

And as others have said, it's a very, VERY high-powered setting. Imagine a person who is the most incredibly awesome person ever. Like Achilles or Beowulf or Gilgamesh. They are so awesome at what they do - negotiating, ninja stuff, stabbing, whatever - that they are quite literally the top of the heap as far as humans go. And THEN, the God of Awesome - who is so awesome that he literally lights up the entire world with his awesomeness - comes down from heaven and personally empowers that person with a shard of his own being, making the person a Demigod of Awesome.

The end result of this is a starting Solar :smallcool:

There's also quite a bit of tech possible in Exalted. The Alchemicals have been mentioned, but even if you don't go with them, the Exalted world (known as Creation) is currently in a sort of Dark Ages where things kinda suck, but there's all kinds of nifty technology from the fallen Solar Empire laying around, if the GM so chooses. Like energy weapons and mechas.

And yes, dice pools can get REAL big REAL fast. A starting character can easily be rolling 15 dice on an attack, and that's before they start using Essence (the Exalted equivalent of Mana) to boost their dice pools.


This sounds good. The epic-ness of the characters wouldn't be too much of a problem, the players will be students at a prestigious combat-oriented university and therefore are a fair bet against any random human, or even an experienced trained opponent.
This sounds like the sort of thing that a Dragonblooded campaign would be good for.

There's 5 to 7 types of Exalts (depending on how you count them). Solars - empowered by the God of Awesome, the Unconquered Sun (hence the name) - are the "default" and the strongest type. Dragonbloods are another type of Exalt that are slightly weaker than the other types, but still able to whip "normal" humans without breaking a sweat and have the numbers and infrastructure to make that sort of university. Plus, they can set things on fire if they pump out enough Essence :smallbiggrin:



Edit: I've read through both the first and second edition core books, and found second edition a bit easier to come to grips with. The veterans in the aforementioned campaign also liked second edition better thanks to various improvements and streamlining. However, some people really like first edition.

Jerthanis
2008-01-25, 01:21 PM
I really like Exalted, but one of the big reasons I like it is for the setting, which is robust, interesting, and huge. It sounds like you want to cook up your own homebrew setting, and want a system to go with it, and I don't know for sure if I can really recommend Exalted towards that purpose. The mechanics of the system draw a pretty sharp distinction between those with awakened essences and those without. The rules are obviously easy enough to modify to a more generic, not deifically-inspired setting, but you might end up throwing out half the powers, and 90% of the artifacts. At that point, you're pretty much just adopting the dice rolling mechanics, and you'd be better served just reading through the book at a bookstore and making notes to use the fundamental mechanics to homebrew your own system from the ground up. That'd be your best bet to make the system you want for the game you want. However, other people are suggesting it's easier to divorce the mechanics from the setting, so it could be that I'm just ridiculously biased towards the setting.

However, I have to recommend getting the core + dragonblooded book and reading through the setting information in both of them. Exalted is an awesome system, setting, and dynamic. If you like WoD, but want more of a Fantasy WoD, Exalted is perfect. If you don't like how dark WoD is, the setting is robust enough to offer many levels of darkness in how it is run. From mysterious pale-faced people in dark cloaks singing dirges in graveyards, hunted by the people they wish to protect all the way up to wrestling the bull of heaven to open the gates to a mystical ancient flying city. It's awesome, and I can't wait for the next time someone in my group runs Exalted.

Fighteer
2008-01-25, 01:27 PM
I played first edition Exalted several years ago, but haven't gone back to it in a while. The maneuver and combination system makes combat fast and incredibly deadly, and the whole thing is played for over the top, anime-style showmanship. And yes, even starting PCs are so dramatically overpowered compared to mortals that it's almost unfair. My starting character (not even a heavily optimized build) could perform a reactive five-hit combo, each blow of which could one-shot any lesser being in the game, while parrying an almost unlimited number of attacks. And that's without splitting his dice pool. Granted, that's burning all his Essence, but still...

Even a "combat university" setting is far too tame for these guys. If you're looking for a Badass Normal play style, rather than a Living Gods approach, you may want to consider having your PCs play Dragonbloods instead of Solars, like Artanis said. They aren't quite so horribly overpowered.

There's also the curse thing, but I suppose you might consider that fluff.

wormwood
2008-01-25, 02:32 PM
Basically, I'd just like to gather some knowledgable opinions on the setting before I shell out for it, as I'd rather not sling more money at a system I'll never use (Savage Worlds I'm looking at you!)

This is mostly off-topic but could have some bearing on the answers you get. What, exactly, is it that you hated about Savage Worlds? There are a lot of systems out there that work or don't work depending on what you're looking for. By knowing what bit of SW you didn't like, folks can give you better suggestions about what you will like.

Tengu
2008-01-25, 07:07 PM
Exalted, Earthdawn and Fading Suns (yeah, a game I've never played - it has THAT much potential) are the trinity of my favorite systems. I could make a long post about what's so good in it, but then evewryone else before has already done a good job with that.

So instead I'll ask - what are the major differences they made in second edition, apart from introducing social combat and a "tick" initiative system?

EvilElitest
2008-01-25, 07:11 PM
It seems to be a good system, but you need to make sure you have a good DM. I haven't had a good experience, but i dislike the "rule of cool" and i would need to have a world that can use that well. However it is really a preference thing (personally, that book is to damn big)
from
EE

Indon
2008-01-25, 07:41 PM
So instead I'll ask - what are the major differences they made in second edition, apart from introducing social combat and a "tick" initiative system?

They reshuffled (I won't go so far as to say, 'revamped') the flavor of Lunars. I didn't really look much into the mechanics since I didn't like the flavor changes and I own a bunch of first edition books already.

Rutee
2008-01-25, 09:49 PM
Lunars made.. oh god, so much better. They're not just barbarians with a purpose now. They're barbarians with a purpose, a means, a better organized meeting group, and a (simple-yet-not) method.

Also, Lunars were weak as hell in first ed. Sure, they could punch Dragonblooded, but by and large, Solars and Sidereals utterly embarrassed them. In the fluff, while they weren't the shining heroes in front, but they /were/ the Solars' mates, and their equals just the same. The mechanics reflect the equality so, so much better now.

...Just not perfectly. I do so wish they had access to slightly less efficient, or more costly (Further down the tree) Perfects..

EvilElitest
2008-01-25, 10:13 PM
I have no idea about these edition changes, what did they entail? Feel free to rant
from
EE

Tengu
2008-01-25, 11:49 PM
Lunars made.. oh god, so much better. They're not just barbarians with a purpose now. They're barbarians with a purpose, a means, a better organized meeting group, and a (simple-yet-not) method.

Also, Lunars were weak as hell in first ed. Sure, they could punch Dragonblooded, but by and large, Solars and Sidereals utterly embarrassed them. In the fluff, while they weren't the shining heroes in front, but they /were/ the Solars' mates, and their equals just the same. The mechanics reflect the equality so, so much better now.

...Just not perfectly. I do so wish they had access to slightly less efficient, or more costly (Further down the tree) Perfects..

Ah, okay. I couldn't care less then, because I don't like Lunars much *runs for the hills from werewolf fans*.

Rutee
2008-01-25, 11:51 PM
Heh. You sure? The new fluff makes them.. much, much more then werewolves. The Thousand Streams River by itself promises tons of awesome and fun potential story ideas, even if you're a Solar (Albeit a Solar willing to take a secondary role to a Lunar, or one willing to try things their way, at least).

Edit: Also, the new fluff doesn't seem to look quite so much on the lycanthropish aspect. Also, Deadly Beastman Transformation is less necessary to be competitive.

Artanis
2008-01-26, 01:47 AM
So instead I'll ask - what are the major differences they made in second edition, apart from introducing social combat and a "tick" initiative system?
In addition to what others have said, they did some MAJOR streamlining of how defenses work. Instead of having to preemptively split your dice pool if you wanted to defend, now your defense is always up, but degrades based on taking actions or getting attacked repeatedly by the same guy. Statistically, it winds up almost identical to just splitting your dice pool first, but it's a hell of a lot easier to use. The veterans in the campaign I was in also claimed that combat just worked better, with the defenses a lot more balanced against attacks than in first edition.

Also, if first edition didn't have Mass Combat rules, second edition does. They can be kinda confusing for a little while, until all of a sudden everything makes perfect sense and they're actually really, really neat.

The last big change I can think of off the top of my head is not mechanical, but presentational. First Edition had those gigantic, 2-page walls of text at the start of every chapter that could be a b**** to slog through - and I'm normally a very avid reader, btw - just to find out a little bit of fluff. Second Edition has comics in their place! You don't get the same level of detail, but good god is it so much easier to read.

Indon
2008-01-26, 01:56 AM
Also, if first edition didn't have Mass Combat rules, second edition does. They can be kinda confusing for a little while, until all of a sudden everything makes perfect sense and they're actually really, really neat.

It does. They're in the Exalted player's guide, the "Mail and Steel" rule section. Like the Warstrider rules, 90% of the mechanics were just those of the commander (read: PC) in charge.

Tengu
2008-01-26, 02:14 AM
Sounds interesting, so I have another question: what do you think that the first edition handles better?

Rutee
2008-01-26, 02:23 AM
Um....

Dunno. I can think of a few fluff bits I really liked out of 1e (Notably, the bit with the Ebon Dragon and the Empress, if I recall correctly; It's kinda cool to watch people get socialed, especially before the actual introduction of Social Combat.. XD), but mechanics.. I think 2e handled all of that less obtrusively. It even wrote combos more sensically. Heck, supposedly even the Siddie stuff is readable.

Well, 1e didn't have the ridiculously broken version of Principle of Motion that exists now. Really, /really/ cheap Extra Action Charm that you can actually activate ahead of time; Grants Extra Actions equal to your WP, which can be invoked at any time, as long as you keep the Ess. committed. Technically speaking, you could, since it's not a Charm Use to use the called-upon Extra Actions, invoke further Extra Action Charms (Or a combo with them in them) within one action of a PoM Flurry. Your ST will HATE you for that kind of recursiveness and ban it of course, but it's possible going strictly by the rules. I'm pretty sure.

Artanis
2008-01-26, 03:17 AM
Um....

Dunno. I can think of a few fluff bits I really liked out of 1e (Notably, the bit with the Ebon Dragon and the Empress, if I recall correctly; It's kinda cool to watch people get socialed, especially before the actual introduction of Social Combat.. XD), but mechanics.. I think 2e handled all of that less obtrusively. It even wrote combos more sensically. Heck, supposedly even the Siddie stuff is readable.

Well, 1e didn't have the ridiculously broken version of Principle of Motion that exists now. Really, /really/ cheap Extra Action Charm that you can actually activate ahead of time; Grants Extra Actions equal to your WP, which can be invoked at any time, as long as you keep the Ess. committed. Technically speaking, you could, since it's not a Charm Use to use the called-upon Extra Actions, invoke further Extra Action Charms (Or a combo with them in them) within one action of a PoM Flurry. Your ST will HATE you for that kind of recursiveness and ban it of course, but it's possible going strictly by the rules. I'm pretty sure.
There's also a timing loophole that will let somebody with Glorious Solar Saber instagib any enemy that has less than a certain hardness (don't remember the exact hardness, but it took at least a 5-dot artifact armor to get it). Of course, the jackass using the loophole was as good as dead for the next enemy who even looked at him wrong, but still.

banjo1985
2008-01-26, 05:50 AM
Thanks for the replies everyone, I think Exalted is what I'm looking for. I've spoken to my gaming group and they sound enthusiastic about the info I've given them.

I'll definitely consider the dragon-blooded option, as the slightly lower power level could be useful. Having heard a little bit about the setting from a friend, some of it will fit with what I have planned, though I will have to abandon a lot of the diefic purpose of it. I'm not sure how much work that will take, but I'm interested enough in Exalted that I'm definitely going to be picking it up.

As for Savage Worlds, I just found the system clumsy and not really a cohesive whole. I bought it with the intention of playing Deadlands, but found it far inferior to the original Deadlands rules.

WhiteHarness
2008-01-26, 08:37 AM
The system is piles of fun, but I hate the game's setting more than I hate just about any other RPG setting in existence.

Rutee
2008-01-26, 09:59 AM
I've heard that opinion expressed on occasion, usually for different reasons. Might I ask why?

Indon
2008-01-26, 12:19 PM
Well, 1e didn't have the ridiculously broken version of Principle of Motion that exists now. Really, /really/ cheap Extra Action Charm that you can actually activate ahead of time; Grants Extra Actions equal to your WP, which can be invoked at any time, as long as you keep the Ess. committed.

In 1'st edition, you instead have a spirit charm which gives you a pool of extra actions equal to your Valor. Only exploitable by Eclipse.

Tengu
2008-01-26, 02:35 PM
I've heard that opinion expressed on occasion, usually for different reasons. Might I ask why?

I think the common reason is that some people just don't like anime and mythology.

Attilargh
2008-01-26, 02:37 PM
I suspect it might have something to do with the tyrannosauri that urinate diamorphine.

Rutee
2008-01-26, 04:40 PM
In 1'st edition, you instead have a spirit charm which gives you a pool of extra actions equal to your Valor. Only exploitable by Eclipse.
That's Principle of Motion in 2e, except Valor is usually smaller then WP though.


I think the common reason is that some people just don't like anime and mythology.
I really, really hope you're wrong, particularly on the emphasized part, but given how often I've seen lately arguments against the exact same narrative style or power scale of a myth (Often because video games share those tropes, ironically..) you might in fact be right..