Exalted 3E Discussion

Except that they specified MCU Cap;

-who is much less bullshit than his Comics/Cartoons counterparts.

 

Attack pool must be strictly superior to have a chance in 2nd ed, because you must score higher than the DV
Also you're a little bit unclear on the rule here, it's that mechanically they skip the damage roll and just apply 1 HL for every 3 raw damage dice to extras . And since extras have 3 HLs...

Amusingly, even though generally less hax, 3e Exalts recover exactly 5 motes in every round of combat, without stunting.

Personally I prefer EarthScorpion's mote reactor anima hack: Exalts don't recover motes in combat at all, except when flashing their anima (but once they go totemic, they recover 15 motes per action...).

 

I thought I'd share this: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?799438-Exalted-3-Hidden-Horse-Style

 

...

I may need to convert that to Ex2.

 

So;

Spoiler

"It makes perfect sense if taken in context, but looks like some random bullshit that 4chan might crank out for lols."

-is this still a legitimate thing in the 3E lore?

 

I don't really care. This is one of the harmless bits out there. Exalted 3E have way bigger problems than this silly trivia.

 

But, but, but! It's the proof that someone is extactic to read Immaculate Texts.
And both Sorcery and Workings are good, what do you mean there is anything else?

 

Rule 36. Might have been more shocking to me if this wasn't QQ.

And tbh this comic always make me wonder why artist make it sylized as feudal japanese not wuxia. This is Scarlet empire of Dragon Blooded not Emerald Empire from L5R.

 

The Scarlet Empire draws inspiration from both Western and Eastern Empires of the past, but most artists and writers usually lean very heavily to one side or the other rather than attempting to mix them like they are supposed to.

 

Text unreadable in dark theme.

 

Now it's a wall of text -_-

 

Bii posted a link, just click on that.

 

Oooh boy, Holden and Mørke are jumping ships just after the corebook finally gets done, and letting Vance and Minton deal with the decisions they made for the E corebook.

Let's hope they scour it for typos, it looks quite unpolished.
Also, basically, the Resonant/Dissonant keywords are the equivalent of Mastery/Terrestrial keywords, but for Artifacts instead of Martial Arts? Gotcha. Was it really needed though?...

 

Why so cynical? And it doesn't say anything about the others.

 

Why not?

They're the one being put under the spotlight.

 

Don't you feel better imagining that people have good reasons to do what they do?

Like, Morke has had a lot of shit on his plate for the last few years. If I'm going to make an assumption about him one way or the other, I'd rather imagine that he has to bow out because his financial situation doesn't allow for freelancing anymore rather than because he's screwing over the fanbase.

Also, E is everything I ever wanted out of Ex2, so I don't have an ounce of bitterness in me. Not for the dev team, at any rate. The only mistake they made that impacts my gameplay experience is that the limit track still exists.

 

No.

Sure. Doesn't mean that the design choices he made won't haunt the new dev team.

I had rather high expectations for E, and the dice tricks and Charm bloat were only some of the disappointments I had to face.
Now, I'm going to try and run it in my RPG circle. If at least my players like it, then I suppose I'll rate it at mediocre instead of hugely disappointing.

 

IME all the flaws of 3E are reasonably easy to deal with.

Character Creation? Just cobble together an XP-based creation system, or hand out BP instead of XP. The latter will give you far more specialized characters, but depending on the group that's just fine.

Charm Bloat? Reference cards make that much easier to handle in-game. Alternatively, cobble together some combos - charm cards that combine the effects of multiple charms, ideally with mote-costs in multiple of fives (for ease of tracking).

Initiative Counting is best done via some sort of marker. Small game counters of any kind do, ideally with two colours (say, black for 1s and white for 5s). Whenever someone hits someone with a withering attack, you slide that amount of Initiative from defender to attacker, and add one more from the bank. If you lose something due to a gambit or decisive attack, it goes back to the bank. Pretty simple and intuitive.

Dice Tricks? Honestly those only get complicated if you run into interactions. Yes, it's an extra roll step but that's usually really quick - it's not that much extra work compared to counting your amount of hits anyway.

Crafting? Burn it with fire. Discard the whole system, either use a fan-made one or just use the system for sorcerous workings for making artifacts (without requiring crafters to be sorcerers), and simple rolls or everything else. Different craft-skills are replaced with one skill, and fields of expertise, like it works for Lore. You might need some charms, but every crafter should be happy with some basic stuff like Craftman Needs No Tools, or a "add skill relevant for the artifact, such as sail for a water-manipulating spear, to the craft roll".

 

Sure, but that's no excuse. They are professionnal writers (or aspiring to be), they shouldn't have been making such lousy design choices.
I shelled over 150€ for a book whose physical copy is only now being shipped, and whose contents shouldn't require any work to adapt into basic ergonomy. Forgive me for not being placated by that kind of advice.

Now, I like what they've done with sorcery a lot .
It works great... as a homebrew idea for Ex2

(Also I kinda went WTF at your post for a second, because, for a second, I mistook you for Valette-Serafina, who is rather vocal against E)

 

I read this post as 'do more side work!'

 

See, I don't have any of these problems. Tons of charms means tons of options, I never wanted to make a crafting character in the first place, I'm not super-concerned with optimizing my chargen, and initiative tracking is about as strenuous as HP tracking; it's only a big deal if you rely on one person to track everyone's numbers. At my table everyone tracks their own initiative, we compare numbers to determine turn order once per round, and nobody gives a shit.

 

So.... your solution to the problems with 3rd edition is to make a new game vaguely based on 3rd edition?

That... is not a reasonable response.

 

Oh, it is indeed not a big deal normally - the game run smoothly enough in my experience. Is just having GM mindset makes me wary of something I can't easily predict, least I end with accidentally house-ruling something that break the game. Like easier access to multiple attack charm. Or something more mundane, like giving the opponent more Health and prolonged the battle unnecessarily. And so on.

 

So what would you imagine the setting and game to be like if this was all you knew about it?;

And if given the chance to do so how would you develop things from there?

 

New system =/= new game!
Almost all of 3E is solid. The social engine works, the combat engine works, all the other stuff (travel and survival and lore and so on) works. That's most of the game,

Heck, even crafting works at simulating one specific thing, if you handle it right. Just...not what most players want out of playing a crafter, and the mechanics are way too complicated.
So you discard the crafting-system and charms.
Your new crafting system is "make a dice roll with a difficulty, that'll show whether you succeed at crafting what you wanted. More successes get a better product or maybe some time savings. Insufficient successes result in a failed product". Just...one dice roll, that's all. Oh no, the difficulty!
For artifact crafting? You just use the same system as for sorcerous workings. It's right there, all you need to do is plug in new goal numbers for each rating of artifact. Means stay the same, Finesse stays the same. You don't have to be a sorcerer to do it, but need an Occult rating. Goal Number 20 for Artifact 3, 25 for Artifact 4, 30 for Artifact 5, arbitrarily higher for N/A. The low end is reachable by mortals, but even a dragonblood can do artifact 5 if they're happy with low finesse. It's getting exactly what you want, so higher finesse ratings, that make things truly challenging. Making a Daiklave 4 with exactly the evocations you want? Has a 50/50 chance of failing if you don't have someone working with you, take extra time, or have exotic materials (magical materials are necessary and don't grant a bonus). Not happy with those numbers? Go with 3=20, 4=30, 5=40, now it's really hard to do high-rating high-finesse even for Exalts and you need extra means for anything beyond artifact 4 even if you're an exalt. It's a system that works.

That just leaves you with the challenge of coming up with charms. Yes, that's a bit of work. But since you're using a really simple engine, and it's not a competitive system, it's hard to make something that's broken. Most crafting is done during downtime, so who cares about mote costs or such.
Talk to your players, see what they want. Make about a dozen charms. Craftsman Needs No Tools, a repair-charm, a "I keep this from breaking by my will alone" charm, a few McGuyver charms, a charm that guarantees that this object works perfectly as long as the people who benefit it worship someone of your choosing (including you), and so on.

Yes, that replaces a system.
No, that doesn't replace the entire game.

Character creation isn't the entire game either. And all you need to do is make sure your players are on a level playing field with each other - you control NPC-growth, and even the speed at which PCs grow since you hand out the XP/BP. Replacing XP with BP isn't even five minutes of work and works.

And "cobbling together combos" isn't even a game design thing. It's really just a player going "okay, I use these charms together often, let's write down their combined effects". Simple, speeds up the game, nothing to screw up.

 

Sorry I'm only picking up on this, but what? I've not read through the whole thread, but did the kickstarter really get that screwed up? I didn't back the project, and ordered a copy from DriveThru a few weeks back, and I've got mine.



Unrelated, but does anyone have anything resembling a conversion from 2e? The changes to essence and combat in general mean I can't just port over the old antagonists wholesale, but I really don't want to have to homebrew everything, or make everyone celestial exalted.