Exalted 3E Discussion

Still thy tongue and speak no more, villain.

We will not hear your lies here.

 

Sounds like a job for a particularly petty ambition 3 Solar Circle Sorcerous Working.

If there aren't enough hours in a day, don't bother scheduling, just add them...

 

No, restoring the lost hour of time to Creation is right and proper.

Petty is using a Miracle Shell to rename(and therefore invert its nature) Dharma so that it can be organized alphabetically with the other Shinma.

 

Fuck Mondays anyway. What did they ever do for us?

 

I know some Lunars that might disagree with this sentiment. And a Primordial, so you might want to watch out for falling planetoids.

 

Wow, I just looked at the beginning of the book again, and the Lunars are now the slaves of the Solars, back in the First Age.

I'm not a fan of Lunars but man, I feel bad for them.

 

Note that in that very same sentence, they are also called the "seconds" of the Solars and the rest of it notes that those bonds have "broken."

In any event, I will be cheerfully pretending that that bit was never included.

 

I may, at some point. Not at the moment though. Might test E here. Might not.

Much like the Exigent Exalted God-blooded and every mention of summer in Creation, I intend to fully ignore that. I don't really care what they write about the setting, I've written that off ages ago ever since I heard about the Liminals.
I just want good rules.

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So, they followed through with that plan to bring back Brawl.
What the fuck.

Abilities represent training. A fast, strong hand-to-hand fighter who doesn't know shit about punching is MA 0 Str 3+ Dex 3+ Sta 3+, not BRW 1-5.
The hand-to-hand skill is called Martial Arts for setting reasons. We do not need two of them, and it's more fitting.

It takes a four dot merit to learn the extra, distinct, ability, and you need a dot in brawl.

But swording is easy, huh. Just pick up a sword, it's not like there's a level of coordination that's needed.


Welp, houserule 1 get. Merge them, like they did the last edition.

 

I kind of dislike how every splat is expected to be able to cover every role. I'd kind of like it if there were no superior Solar Stealth, for example, because Solars are the guys who are supposed to be shiny and visible. So maybe Solars do Stealth by walking around like they own the place, like they're supposed to be there, and it works. It's not much like hiding, and it's not as widely applicable as being able to turn into a rat and scuttle through the walls, but it's thematic and it covers some of the same ground.

Anyway, the themes and roles I'd like to see are:

Solars are the generals, priests, and sorcerer-kings.

Lunars are the special ops, champions, and trailblazers.

Sidereals are the advisers, oracles, and liaisons.

Dragonbloods are the lieutenants, technicians, and soldiers.

Other splats can be redundant with these roles: the new Exalts presumably weren't "designed" by Autocthon to work together as a coherent whole, so they can step on several toes without being redundant.

Oh well, at least the combat engine looks pretty decent this time around.

 

I can't quite agree there. I like the theme approach.

Solars are chosen of skill and virtue, and should hold powers of being very good at stuff and being shiny.

Lunars are chosen of change and survival, and should hold powers of changing and not dying.

Sidereals are chosen of fate, and should hold powers of being hard to understand and not working right. That don't like that, so they've gotten very good at finding ways to make themselves work.

Dragonblooded are born of the elements and of duty, and should hold powers of bending and always being able to kill something.

 

I'll jokingly suggest that part of the delays come from them making an entire fake corebook to leak and get people pissed off about 3e around the time the real one neared completion.

Unfortunately, we all know it isn't so.

 

Or maybe the leak was planned by the developers in secret so that us fans have something to do - such as searching more flaws and all.

 

And the 3e staff will descend gloriously from the heavens to hand out the actual, perfect copies - free of blemish or flaw - to the true believers, who kept the faith!

Darkened gets a rock.

 

A shiny rock, polished by the Sun himself.

 

Nope, just an anthracite sphere!

Very shiny coal...

 

It may be a much lower difficulty, though there are only a couple of ways to enhance this roll. But yeah, ambition 3 finesse 5 solar workings are readily achievable by a dedicated Solar if they can gather five or so additional means. Less if they can stunt the rolls extremely well.

The whole sorcerous workings system clearly requires extensive ST adjuration. For certain (crazy) things, surviving Sidereal death squads a few Aerial Legions may be the hardest part.

 

I'll just chime in and comment that what people like Valette-Serafina seem to be experiencing now, I experienced two years ago, when the devs were talking about some of the changes they were planning (nerfing the power curve, for example), and already planned to take the bits of 3e that interested me (Exigents, Evocations, not so sold on Getimians (until I heard they had a Yin Yang Essence pool instead of Peripheral and Personal) or Liminals (Prometheans were never my favorite game line)), and put them into, as what others have suggested, a 2.75 edition. The preview of what Infernals were supposed to be in 3e confirmed my decision for a time (I didn't mind the rape ghosts of the Abyssals, though ). The new fight system appeared gimmicky, the 'reroll X's until they no longer appear' mechanics tedious, the craft system WTF is it.

Yet now that I peek again at what E shapes up to be, I find myself liking what I see more and more, of course there are bits I don't like (if the 24 hours day is 3e canon, that'll change veeery fast), but on the whole I'm willing to give it a genuine chance when almost two years ago I was seriously balking at backing the Kicstarter, finally giving in almost regretfully (but still cashing about 150€ on this).

I guess it will depend on the playtest I have planned with my gaming group. If 3e rekindles interest in Exalted in my group then whatever theoretical objections are raised, 3e will be a good Exalted game for me.
I'm still planning on making a 2.75 homebrew, but unlike two years ago, it is starting to look like "90% 3e with 10% 2e" rather than the reverse.

The devs appear to making most Charms as ironclad as possible to prevent abusive combinations, on the other hand the general systems are pretty light and explicitely require the ST to weigh in. That's a design philosophy I'm uneasy with (I would have liked a bit more granularity and examples), but I can sorta understand where they went. Legalese is rarely a viable solution with this.

As for people disparaging the Exigents as glorified God-Blooded, well, there existed other kinds of Exalts that in other editions were exterminated in the Primordial War in 2e. 3e states that some survived, and the process to make them is in the hands of the mightiest of the Gods. They are rare, they can be extremely powerful, and they require a god to sacrifice their power, their very life sometimes, where unlike the heredity of Terrestrial potential or the unending reincarnations of Celestial Exalts, they have no easy means of assuring their perennity and must make the most of their lives, with, for most of them, no hope of a bloodline to carry out their works, or future incarnations to take up the mantle again. That's evocative in a bittersweet way.
You don't even have to actually use them, they're supposed to be as rare as the ST wants them. But they are Exalts. If you call them God-Blooded, then call the Terrestrials Elemental-Blooded as well. (I remember this fuckstupid discussion on the WW forums years ago; "Are the Dragon-Blooded true Exalted?")

 

What workings? I keep looking but I don't see these workings at all.

I haven't been talking about sorcerous workings or personas or the like, because my solution is rather simply to just cut them out of the book.

Well, the persona tree-starts that don't let you rewrite your entire character-sheet mid-scene are fine, but when it starts giving you XP there are issues.

But, okay, let's do this. With regards to workings vs craft, unless you're a dedicated crafter you can probably just do better at making artifacts by using sorcery instead. My kneejerk reaction is, well, pretending these don't exist because doing that kind of thing is largely what either specific spells or craft are for, and it's not like demon summoning doesn't still justify sorcery by itself already. The fact that craft starts out a bit harder but has a ton of charm structure to back it up and make it easier means that you may be able to edge out breaking the setting as a min/maxed crafter, but the sorcerer gets there far far quicker and easier. At the same time the sorcerer is spending on each working while the crafter isn't using XP.

In the short run or low investment as a side thing, the sorcerer does much much better. In the long run, the crafter gets to do anything sorcerous workings can do, except without spending XP on each project and requiring to pin things to objects.

Likewise while terminus in craft is "get enough extra gxp to use the big charms" terminus in workings is a much more constraining limit.

How constraining, let's test it out. I'm not seeing any 7 again charms for sorcerous workings or "reroll all 3s unless your roll has more than 3 sequential dice in which case reroll all 4s instead" effects.

Let's also say your ST responds to the "Okay I use a celestial working to make sorcerous workings easier in this city" argument by throwing a book in your face, and just stares flatly at you when you mention such artifacts.

IE: Just excellency+base pool+3 (Occult: sorcerous workings) specialty.

Spoiler: Workings Maths

That gives 23 dice

This'll average out to 11.5 successes/roll

Finesse 1 says difficulty 1, so 10.5 left

75/11.5=6.5 rounds up to 7.

So, you need about 7 rolls absent other modifiers to do a finesse 1 ambition 3 solar working. Coming in slightly below average can waste all that effort, so you'll want at least 8. Doable easily.

Let's see how punishing this is.

Complementary ability craft 5+ a bunch of charms raises your terminus to 7. (Seriously, this means is way too easy to get for most working fluff)

Complementary spell is a bit harder to work in, but can be done if you just work your thematic effects.

Cooperation is pretty hard unless you have a big circle. You're going to need really weighty spirits to help out on this, 3rd circles or the like at minimum, so this one works out.

Materials: Very ST Fiaty, but if you can get them for craft, you can probably work them here. +1

Extra time: Hurts, but easy enough to take. +1 for months. Years is excessive and never going to be necessary ever.

Sorcerous Infrastructure: By the time you're aiming for this, you better have at least the lower version. Come on. +1, maybe +2.

So that gives +2 from ability, +1 from materials, +1 from infrastructure and maybe +1 from time.

That's 9 rolls, maybe 10 if you can sell the ST on a spell, and 11 as a bonus. Is this enough to do things reliably?

http://anydice.com/program/53bc hahaha, yeah. 98%+ success chances.

Easy.

Well, at finesse 1.

At finesse 3.... http://anydice.com/program/53bd

we're already down to 57% success chances

In short, you can get your ambition 3 workings every other month reliably, but you're going to be really really hard pressed to get more than finesse 1 with anywhere near realiability. If you can double your time, finesse 3 is doable.

Once charms start making sorcerous workings easier everything goes out the window and they're the one true path to ultimate power.

As it is, they're a quick and dirty way to completely bypass the need for a dedicated crafter character that's a free perk on the already very useful sorcery.

Overpowered, almost certainly, but probably not as bad as they looked when I skimmed the section. If they actually required real resources (instead of solar XP which you'll eventually have more than enough of) to work, they'd be almost balanced, and if getting access to every sorcerous working ever required slightly more than "Buy these really really awesome sorcery initiations loaded with free goodies" they'd almost be fair, maybe.

Of course, having established that you can reliably do the hardest workings, anything less is kinda a cakewalk if you're willing to skimp on finesse and potentially manageable even if you aren't.

Likewise, I'm probably missing some crazy occult booster that'll completely change the maths.

 

Specialities only grant one die now, from what I can see. Only one can apply.

Not a bad thing.

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Combat seems reasonable. I'll need to look through the Charms.

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They got mass combat right.

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The Red Rule is good.

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Orichalcum rule is good too, really.

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Social system is good. I like how it works.
It'll take a little while to memorize, but I'm gonna.

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Projects are good.

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Yeddim are now heavier than hippopotami.

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The Silent Wind of- Hell? What is this "hell"? What even is that?

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Poison makes sense. Same for Disease.

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Lore stunting is now a use of the ability. Ka.

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And now the Charms...

 

Mass combat works?

That'll be wild.

 

Hahaha, oh wow /tg/, you are just full of good ideas.

"Hey faggots, I'm a Loremaster giving my whole circle +2 mote regen!"

"Oh crap, take him out!"

"Have I mentioned I'm also a Crane Stylist?"

"Shit!"