New Exalted Combat

Stinktopus · Post by **Stinktopus** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:52 am

Judging__Eagle wrote:
-While facing large amounts of [mooks] with the rest of the party; running to their left flank, throwing fire bombs at their opposite flank; and then diving into them while changing into a [Setting T-Rex] to create maximum confusion; as a single rounds actions; for +1 stunt dice [~yay!~]

I had a guy who played Exalted join a D&D 3.0 game I was running. He threw a hissy fit when I wouldn't let him assemble, ignite, and throw multiple Molotav Cocktails while running through a room and diving out the window in a single round.

Does an extended Exalted campaign start to feel like sitting through the unskippable summons of Final Fantasy 7?

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:53 am

Omegonthesane wrote:The only guarantee is getting a 1-die stunt, and that isn't the level where you refresh your "not being mindraped" mana bar.

Fair enough; but the stunts I had my character perform were things like:

-While facing large amounts of [mooks] with the rest of the party; running to their left flank, throwing fire bombs at their opposite flank; and then diving into them while changing into a [Setting T-Rex] to create maximum confusion; as a single rounds actions; for +1 stunt dice [~yay!~]

-Coordinating my character's actions with other characters so that out PCs would: 1) bunch up enemies (calling columns of earth out of the ground, knocking them over to create kill zones) or 2) layer bunched up enemies with multiple character's AoEs (firebombs and obsidian butterfly bullshit)

The originally quoted examples that gave +1 stunt dice, were single actions that difficult to separate from each other (being officious, and bribing at the same time; what a radical notion!).

While more than once players 'stunting' several seemingly unrelated actions to achieve a specific purpose within the constraints of their combat round also only got +1 stunt dice.

The fact that such detailed description of maneuvers and tactical positions got an amount of stunt dice that I could forget to add to my dice pool, and not notice, made me not really care about doing any more stunting afterwards. The whole game felt like a joke; and my PC was generally laughing at everything that happened; because I was laughing at what was happening at the table, and could barely stop.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 8:00 am

Beta Review: Exalted 3E combat
Your starting initiative is Wits+Awareness roll. During combat it can change (duh) and be reduced bellow 0. If that happens, then that's a Limit Break Initiative Crash. While in the state of Initiative Crash you can't make Decisive Attacks, lose all Hardness, and can't use certain charms.

The book explicitly prohibits you from using friendly fire to muck with Initiative, because the entire combat system is a huge abstraction completely unrelated to anything that actually happens in the setting. Earthdawn fans cry tears of blood.

Defenses
There are three types: Parry, Dodge and Soak. Parry is objectively the best, because it's used against both Withering and Decisive attacks, and because the formulas look like this.

Parry: ([Dexterity + (Brawl, Martial Arts, or Melee)] / 2, round up) + weapon’s defense.
Evasion: ([Dexterity + Dodge] / 2, round up) - armor’s mobility penalty

The book doesn't say that you can't parry ranged attacks, so Dodge is 100% worthless.

Characters can suffer three kinds of damage from attacks in Exalted, detailed below.
Initiative damage. blah-blah
Bashing damage. blah-blah
Lethal damage. blah-blah
Aggravated damage. blah-blah

Editing is hard you guys.

Nihnoz · Post by **Nihnoz** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 4:15 pm

Longes wrote: The book doesn't say that you can't parry ranged attacks, so Dodge is 100% worthless.

Dodge has a better defensive charm suite than any of the other combat skill trees (except melee) and can be used while wielding a ranged weapon. Melee dudes don't really need dodge because melee is hax but say, a brawler, archer, or martial artist could definitely make use of it.

shirak · Post by **shirak** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 7:50 pm

The Withering/Decisive split seems like it has a lot of potential. Consider the old swashbuckler vs knight problem. In d20 the knight has a major advantage because of higher numbers on his weapons/armor. But under such a system:

The swashbuckler builds his [Gauge] by insulting opponents, precision attacks to wound vital areas and otherwise acting like a swashbuckler.

Meanwhile, the knight implacably stalks towards his opponent, forcing him to dodge into disadvantageous positions and in other ways builds [Gauge] by acting like a knight.

Both of them do damage based on their [Gauge] so weapon selection is immaterial. Same goes for armor to a lesser degree (especially if your defense is also concept related and your actual armor is a cosmetic thing).

Also, under such a system diplomancers will talk people to death (the classic "taunt your enemy into making a mistake" seen in so many books), combat sorcerers will arcane people to death and so on. All you have to do is let people build [Gauge] by doing character/concept appropriate stuff.

Of course, Exalted almost certainly does NOT do that. Still, it seems like a really neat idea.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 9:53 pm

That sounds awful, shirak. It sounds awful in the same way that 4E D&D was awful, where you were forced to stick to a small branching script because trying to take actions not in the script (like magic item powers, special maneuvers, or god-forbid rule 42) put you behind.

Even if you don't agree that's a bad design goal, it still adds a layer of complexity for no reason. If you want to reward swashbucklers for buckling their swashes, use the basic system to do so. You know, like giving them a damage bonus if they more X number of square in a round, giving them The Edge if they outspeed their opponent by a certain number of squares, giving them a small list of actions they can use as a swift action (knocking over barrels, manipulating handheld objects, jumping on shit, etc.), and so-on. If you really want to stereotype certain classes into certain behaviors, like what that [Gauge] system would do, you could even give them penalties for not doing sufficiently swashbucklery things. For example, the ACP of swashbucklers gets increased by 50% and if they take the attack action three or more times in a row they get mounting accuracy penalties.

K · Post by K » Tue Sep 22, 2015 11:08 pm

shirak wrote: Of course, Exalted almost certainly does NOT do that. Still, it seems like a really neat idea.

It does seem like an interesting idea. It seems like they got pretty close to making a unifying mechanic for different combat actions and styles, almost solved the problem of different strengths of combat PCs in the same combat, and almost solved the problem of the five-minute work-day.

Dogbert · Post by **Dogbert** » Tue Sep 22, 2015 11:29 pm

Longes wrote:Jon Chung has been banned from an Exalted thread once again, for explaining why Join Battle is the reasonable response to social combat in Exalted 2e

Onyx Path's Forums RPGnet bans someone for not lavishing Onyx path products. In other news, water is wet.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed Sep 23, 2015 4:29 am

shirak wrote:The Withering/Decisive split seems like it has a lot of potential. Consider the old swashbuckler vs knight problem. In d20 the knight has a major advantage because of higher numbers on his weapons/armor.

For a tabletop game you have to keep in mind how long a turn takes, how many turns ends an average encounter, and how many players will be waiting on their turn. So something like the swashbuckler dancing around the knight to wear him down for a finishing blow should probably be resolved in 1-2 turns.

Have you read "Riddle of Steel?" it's a die pool game where you have a pool of 'combat dice' to spend on offense and reactive defense that only refreshes every two turns so you usually have the 1st turn spent on reducing your opponent's combat pool (feinting, fancy footwork, light attacks) and 2nd turn using what combat pool you have left to deliver a finishing blow. Heavy armor reduces your combat pool but also means you can afford to spend less combat dice on defense as your armor can reliably deflect light blows.

ike they got pretty close to making a unifying mechanic for different combat actions and styles, almost solved the problem of different strengths of combat PCs in the same combat, and almost solved the problem of the five-minute work-day.

How so? And what would it take for Exalted 3e to go from "almost got it" to "solved it"?

K · Post by K » Wed Sep 23, 2015 8:05 am

OgreBattle wrote:
How so? And what would it take for Exalted 3e to go from "almost got it" to "solved it"?

Well, this idea has been bandied around in various iterations.

I'd dump the legacy WW mechanics like soaks, not tie it to initiative at all, reduce the number of defense mechanics and stats, and just generally do a few more drafts of the same idea until something clean and fast emerges.

Currently, it's very complicated and doesn't offer a lot of tactical freedom, so a goal needs to be to reverse those two things.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Sep 24, 2015 11:34 pm

Omegonthesane wrote:
Judging__Eagle wrote:
Longes wrote:
I'll be honest; reading at how little is actually necessary to game Stunt dice; I'm depressed and furious that I went through such extraordinary efforts to get them at all in a Ex2 game. Especially for the paltry amounts of rewarded bonuses that I got for those efforts.

Exalted: making you feel like a chump; despite what it says on the box!
The only guarantee is getting a 1-die stunt, and that isn't the level where you refresh your "not being mindraped" mana bar.

Everything I can find on Google says that the only difference between a 1-die stunt and a 2-die stunt is whether you incorporate "the environment". 3-die stunts, of course, come from DM fellatio.

Advice also found via Google: give everyone a cheat-sheet of words that commonly associate with various actions, for use in stunting.

My extension: then have them mad-lib "I _verb_ my _attack_ _attack-adjective_ the _environment-feature_, _verb-ing_ _attack-adjective_ _enemy's_ _body-part_" and what-not.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 12:59 am

As an aside, the whole 'incorporate the environment into your stunts' is ironically and amusingly counterproductive in the context of Exalted.

See, Exalted is supposed to be this super-epic power fantasy where your heroes decimate armies and shatter mountains with one blow and yadda yadda. However: if you note the antics of actual high-powered fiction like, oh, Dragonball the environment becomes less and less of a factor as the power level of the series increases. If you can actually shatter mountains with one blow, it generally doesn't matter where the fuck you're fighting because it's not even an inconvenience. Not when you zip across the battlefield in the blink of an eye, have super-senses, and aren't even slowed down by such prosaic obstacles like steel walls and old-growth forests.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Sep 25, 2015 4:03 am

When that happens, you just say "I leap up against the MOON and kick off, diving towards the enemy and pulling the clouds into a cloak around me!" instead of "I leap against the wall and kick off, diving towards the enemy and pulling a wall hanging into a cloak around me!"

See? A little word replacement and it's totally more epic and amazing.

Heaven's Thunder Hammer · Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:11 pm

I have played and run Exalted 1E and 2E back in the day. My groups came up with a simple grading system:

1 Die - Describe your action "I feint left-left-right and try to get in a leg shot."
2 Dice - Describe your action and interact with the environment. "I feint left-left-right then do a kick off from the tree and get him with a leg shot."
3 Dice - "Something really cool" - and completely objective and therefore rare.

There were some epic moments, where the bad guy was trying to kill us for accidentally killing his wife in the 1st age. The guy harassed us for multiple sessions and brought this up repeatedly. One PC's response? "You know what, she had it coming!" Yeah that was a 3 die. ;

In hindsight - 3 dice could have been a 2 die stunt + in character one liners or something.

That said - when I do eventually get my Exalted 3E deluxe books, I plan to sell them.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 7:29 pm

I don't even know what I'm going to do with my deluxe books. Set them on fire or something. Or figure out how Ebay works. One of those two

koz · Post by **koz** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:50 pm

I had one player who would always 'dust farm' as we called it - he would add 'I kick up dust' to every action description to qualify for 'environment use'. Basically, I consider the 'use of environment' requirement for extra dice to be quite easily trivialized and not really worth it.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 9:40 am

Re: Stunting

All that I'm getting from other people's posts is that once I learned that I could get bonus dice; I began aiming for stunts that could have only been qualified as 3 dice stunts, because why the fuck wouldn't you? If you're a remotely creative wargames player, you're surely going to be able to figure out how to involve two synergistic actions that attack a specific area of the enemy's forces, and also involve/affect the overall battlefield's environments.

Then again, the people I was playing Exalted with witnessed me play most games with the wargaming and novelty dials set to 11. In Danger Patrol sessions with this group the massive failures I'd usually suggest for anyone's actions involved "the character accidentally summons all the demons of hell to fight everyone, even the badguys" (i.e. something that gave lots of bonus dice; and was the least likely to happen; even/especially in games where hell and demons weren't part of the narrative). Playing magically stealthy Mages in Shadowrun that used autofire (and/or) grenade launchers; plus robots/drones. Generally trying to do new things that I saw no one had thought of doing yet.

Azmodael · Post by **Azmodael** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 7:40 am

I have now idea how I stumbled on this forum. I was searching for something ex3 related for certain.

Anyway here is my opinion on the new edition based on the leaked playtest, which we have played for about 15 sessions now, including 4 fights.

Good
+Combat is simple and steamlined. People who have never played RPG before figured out their charms by session 2

+Combat is much less lethal then Ex 2.0. You have a pretty good warning when you are about to die (enemy initiative 10+) and you can prepare accordingly (and your teammates can intervene). Also you don't generally die if you are incapacitated, your teammates can heal you afterwards giving the man with medicine charms a chance to shine

+Also defending against every hit is no longer mandatory like it was in 2e. It is perfectly fine to spend no motes on defense for a round or two if you have decent armor and a lot of initiative yourself

Bad
-A shitton of bookkeeping. Less so then 2.0, but it's still too much
-Multiattack charms are back despite promises they would be gone

Also I wouldn't trust anything that Longes says (I don't know the guy, so it's nothing personal) because it is complitely biased and untested in actual play. The system has its own problems, but the core engine works much better then E2 and is actually playable.

Parry is better then Dodge 1on1, but parry is all about trading blows with the enemy. Dodge is much more flexible and also vital for Disengagement. Thus Dodge is tailored more for the agile swordbuckler-ish or archery based characters. Dodge also has stuff like jump when you evade, make the enemy attack an ally if he mises you, make you immune to one enemy charm etc etc. Parry is about stay there and survive.

In the new exalted combat engine whenever you fight in Close Range you are Engaged, much like the threatened squares in D&D. Except you cannot break away from engagement unless you succeeed on Disengage Action (instead of attacking) that is Dodge+Dex vs Dex+Athletics. Someone without Dodge is stuck in melee forever, whereas Dodge can disengage to pelt you with arrows or thrown weapons.

Of the combat abilities:
Archery has great decisive attack finishers and the benefits of long range, but the charm tree is a bit bland in options at Essence 1 and Essence 2. That said Archery is the best ability if you want to have like 2-3 offensive charms at chargen, as it gives a lot of benefit for small investment. Hopefully they will add more E1 and E2 charms in the release.

Melee is the best rounded combat ability with answer to every type of threat, but also has the biggest charm investment. If you want to play the "tank" you go Melee, because the best defense charms are in there. Melee's biggest weakness is that the offensive charms are not as strong as in the other trees. Melee is much less likely to make you suddenly explode, but you can't explode the enemy as easily compared to other abilities.

Brawl is monsterous in one-on-one fights, but very weak if outnumbered. Currently it has a combo of ridicilous charms that can make any enemy in the book explode in one round, but we have confirmation it is getting toned down. Brawl lacks good defensive charms, but can kill you in many (spectacular) ways. It's also great for shutting down dangerous targets via clinches (which are actually simple and functional to use and not the mess that was 2e). And you can actually use people as missiles to throw at other people. Easily my favorite ability.

Thrown is all about stealth and "alpha" strike damage, as well as Gambits like disarm or distract to spice up things. Thrown weapons are the only weapons that you can apply mundane poison to (which is stupid and luckily easy to change). Thrown is able to function in close range, whereas an Archery character is fucked if anything goes in Close range with them. Thrown is incredibly strong on stealth attacks and the first round of combat, but it's usefulness diminishes as the fight progresses (unless you are supernal or E3 - there are some great charms that require E3 and keep you dangerous for the whole fight). Thrown+Melee works just as well as Thrown+Dodge and Stealth is a almost mandatory for Thrown.

MArtial Arts are very well themed and are a great pick if you are following some kind of shtick for your character, but most are severly lacking in defensive charms and you need to splice into Crane style or Melee/Dodge to stay alive. We have no martial artist in the group so i can't really comment on them.

Lastly I'd like to say that Dexterity remains to be the God-stat of the system, but at least Strength and Stamina are much more useful to have now. Also boring Soak monsters are much harded to make in this edition.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 9:29 am

Azmodael wrote: Also I wouldn't trust anything that Longes says (I don't know the guy, so it's nothing personal) because it is complitely biased and untested in actual play. The system has its own problems, but the core engine works much better then E2 and is actually playable.

You know, now that I got older and busier, I think there are there basic tests to determine actual playability of a system, before we dig into crunchy optimization details:

(1)Does it unnecessarily slow down basic task resolution, for example by making people roll 11+ dice routinely?

(2)Is its math so obviously fucked, that results which the book implicitly or explicitly presumes and actual results of a character generated by simply concentrating on areas in which he should be competent are in entirely different worlds?

(3)Does it, through the course of casual play, produces divide by zero outcomes in scenarios where you rather would have a solid set of rules to fall back onto?

You don't need to play Ex3 to see that the answers to ##1-2 at least are definitely "Yes".

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 10:04 am

Also boring Soak monsters are much harded to make in this edition.

Being a Soak monster was nigh-impossible in Ex2e, because the damage output of an Exalt was much higher than Soak, and because ping/overwhelming weapons are a thing. There were pretty much two ways to be a soak monster: to be a Lunar, or to be a malfean Infernal with the masochism martial art.

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 11:57 pm

Longes wrote:
Also boring Soak monsters are much harded to make in this edition.
Being a Soak monster was nigh-impossible in Ex2e, because the damage output of an Exalt was much higher than Soak, and because ping/overwhelming weapons are a thing. There were pretty much two ways to be a soak monster: to be a Lunar, or to be a malfean Infernal with the masochism martial art.

Couldn't Twilights pull this off too?

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Oct 18, 2015 5:47 am

In the original 2e - yes, in 2.5 - no. The Twilight anima ability allowed them to spend motes to reduce damage. Which led to the following scheme:

1. Stack enough soak to reduce the average charmless attack to ping.
2. Activate Essence Gathering Temper against the ping. Gain pile of motes.
3. Activate Twilight anima power to eat the damage, if there is any.
4. If anyone tries to kill you with a damage combo or a save-or-die, pop perfect defense.

Ping and Overwhelming are the main reasons why soak monsters are unviable in Exalted 2e. Having wound penalties of any kind pushes you off the curve very quickly, so having been hit once is basically a death sentence. And every opponent worth noticing will have an artefact weapon with Overwhelming, making your massive soak useless. Exalted 2e soak is binary between "dead in one strike" (can't reduce attack to ping with soak) and "death of a thousand cuts" (can reduce attack to ping with soak).

Azmodael · Post by **Azmodael** » Sun Oct 18, 2015 6:00 am

(1)Does it unnecessarily slow down basic task resolution, for example by making people roll 11+ dice routinely?

(2)Is its math so obviously fucked, that results which the book implicitly or explicitly presumes and actual results of a character generated by simply concentrating on areas in which he should be competent are in entirely different worlds?

(3)Does it, through the course of casual play, produces divide by zero outcomes in scenarios where you rather would have a solid set of rules to fall back onto?

Point 1 is not really relevant to the playability of the system, but to how quick conflict resolution is. Slow systems are not necessary unplayable (though I must admit over time I've come to prefer quick and light systems myself).

Point 2 is about expectations vs actual effect of conflict resolution and there is no disparity here, you just have to quickly upscale your expectations. If you approach Exalted with the same mindset of, say, D&D it won't work. However I have to coencede your point that the setting and the system clash somewhat. The book as written suggests you to do minor heroic acts that characters who are properly build mechanically can achieve almost without effort, especially vs mortal opposition. But then again to give an example in our current game we are planning to take over a whole nation in the span of 2 to 3 sessions. In most other RPG games this would be a monumental campaign in its own right.

Point 3 I don't understand honestly. All RPG systems produce "divide by 0" situations that are subject to DM fiat.

Azmodael · Post by **Azmodael** » Sun Oct 18, 2015 6:16 am

Longes wrote:In the original 2e - yes, in 2.5 - no. The Twilight anima ability allowed them to spend motes to reduce damage. Which led to the following scheme:

1. Stack enough soak to reduce the average charmless attack to ping.
2. Activate Essence Gathering Temper against the ping. Gain pile of motes.
3. Activate Twilight anima power to eat the damage, if there is any.
4. If anyone tries to kill you with a damage combo or a save-or-die, pop perfect defense.

Ping and Overwhelming are the main reasons why soak monsters are unviable in Exalted 2e. Having wound penalties of any kind pushes you off the curve very quickly, so having been hit once is basically a death sentence. And every opponent worth noticing will have an artefact weapon with Overwhelming, making your massive soak useless. Exalted 2e soak is binary between "dead in one strike" (can't reduce attack to ping with soak) and "death of a thousand cuts" (can reduce attack to ping with soak).

This is pretty much correct, but not completely. Soak is still important for every character and if you can only take 1 attack/round (flurry breaker) and can reduce that damage to ping then you are a soak monster. Lunars made the best soak monsters because they could heal and pre-nerf Twilight anima was the closest second.

My longest and most fun campain in 2e was actually with DB players simple because they didn't have access to the damage multiplication charms available to other splats. One of the players was a badass DB with heavy armor, thunderbolt shield and a stone that negated wound penalties. He also had 3 or 4 Ox-Body charms (boosted to Solar level). He would jump headfirst into any fight and pretend he never got hurt despite that he always got hacked into pieces. It was not the optimal XP expenditures, but it was incredibly thematic for the character and made my life easier as a DM because I could pile the damage on him without bringing him down quickly.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Sun Oct 18, 2015 7:55 am

Soak is still important for every character and if you can only take 1 attack/round (flurry breaker) and can reduce that damage to ping then you are a soak monster.

No. Just no. If you die to ping then you are not a soak monster. Because you died to an enemy making a flurry and filling up your entire health track with ping. Or to a squad of the monk mooks with 1 die orichalcum knives.
Pre-nerf Twilights were the soak monsters, because unlike Lunars they had an option of not taking any damage in the first place, rather than healing it.