Posted: Sun Sep 12, 2010 4:52 pm
I don't know. I like the Exalted setting as it is, especially the Infernals.
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Apparently "Shinj" is not on Urban Dictionary. I have taken steps to rectify that.Starmaker wrote:"Whiny emo PoS" is okay, as long as the character does not shinj.
Why not? I don't see anyone claiming that the aristocracy is inherently better then some Poor asshole from the Ghetto.Lago PARANOIA wrote:I don't agree with Exalted's wanking to the idea of merit > accident of birth.
The Gaming Den - or at least the people in it that talk about Exalted a lot - seem to think that Exalted is unironically lauding Great Man Theory and the conceits of aristocracy. Yeah, I know, I don't understand it either. My assumption/hope is that I'm wildly misunderstanding them.theye1 wrote:Why not? I don't see anyone claiming that the aristocracy is inherently better then some Poor asshole from the Ghetto.Lago PARANOIA wrote:I don't agree with Exalted's wanking to the idea of merit > accident of birth.
But I think, I can say one or two phrases about this one.RiotGearEpsilon wrote: The Gaming Den - or at least the people in it that talk about Exalted a lot - seem to think that Exalted is unironically lauding Great Man Theory and the conceits of aristocracy. Yeah, I know, I don't understand it either. My assumption/hope is that I'm wildly misunderstanding them.
Slowly returning to posting... I won't say that Exalted wanks about that. Partially because Exalted cannot decide whether Celestial Exaltations are awared by a benevolent gods, merit, destiny or ambition and stick with the decision.Lago PARANOIA wrote:I don't agree with Exalted's wanking to the idea of merit > accident of birth.
The choice of words more than a bit tongue-in-cheek. I don't even run VtM in angsty ways.Princess wrote:FatR, about Abyssals.
First of all, Self-Pity Emo with Drama as it seems to me is failed concept. We have to play glorious and heroic characters and ANGST-BUTTHURT as characters main theme is better suited for some VtM.
By Better Than You I mean that the entity in question is, in fact, better than PCs, so PCs actually catching up is out of the question. Which is true for the Deathlords. In practice, there is no way for PCs to ever get above Essence 5, even if GM is willing to waive the age requirement. The campaign is simply extremely unlikely to last long enough, and extreme mechanical complexity bars anyone but the most hardcore fans from beginning it at high-Essence levels (in fact, as I mentioned earlier, even default Exalted chargen is too complex for newbies and casual players).Princess wrote:FatR, about Abyssals.
Third. There is nothing bad in Better than You Deathlords, as long as they are not dicks who are trying to use you. Even Son Goku had to train under teachers who were stronger than him. Well, eventually he surpassed them all. But still, there is nothing bad in sensei.
Yeah, you pretty much need to use mirrors for most effects in this style. But you know what's a really good mirror that's always available? The human eye. Like, the ones that are in your head. Yeah, seriously, that's how you see. By any reasonable definition that would let a bathroom mirror and a piece of glass be a mirror, a human eye is also a mirror. Except for a couple of effects, you can pretty much tell any 'but what if he gets caught without his spellbook?' limitation to go fuck itself. You still want some mirrors on your person anyway for the infinite spellpoints charm and the simacrulum loop charm. Yes, you heard me right.Little groups of pattern spiders congregate near the patches of fate where this style has been used. They chitter to each other softly, appearing—as much as metal spiders with unblinking jade eyes can—to be disconcerted, slightly confused, even upset. They do not speak of any concerns they might have, and no spider has directly confronted a student of this style.
In the company of a practitioner, the spiders show the same deference they would give any Sidereal Exalted—no more, no less. Yet, they leave his presence as soon as possible.
A practitioner of the Obsidian Shards of Infinity Style seems to understand something his opponents don’t. A subtle, knowing look lies in his eyes, even when he seems to look at things that aren’t there. Every move seems strange, slightly jerky. The logic behind his motions is impenetrable; his attacks, flatly impossible. When he divulges his philosophy, he speaks in nonsensical metaphors, and it is difficult for others to make heads or tails of it—even other masters of the style.
Perhaps the Sidereal says there are many ways of seeing. Perhaps he says there is only one but it can be portrayed as many. Perhaps he merely says one can choose as one will and punctuates the statement with a perfect strike.
That's really not true. If it were, you could use your eyes as tiny projectors.Lago PARANOIA wrote:But you know what's a really good mirror that's always available? The human eye. Like, the ones that are in your head. Yeah, seriously, that's how you see.
Q: From my perspective, perfect defenses have two main virtues, neither of which are setting-based:
Firstly, they're robust against bad mechanics writers, and confer some of that protection to characters. (Gayo)
A: If we have bad writers doing our mechanics, the game is fucked regardless. (Holden)
(Plague of Hats)
While issues like this aren't all that simple, I think it's sufficient for most people to explain it this way:
Perfects were sort of just a system unto themselves. They ended up saying "Why play with the game system we just spent 10, 20, 50 pages talking about when you can play rock vs. scissors?" Their best, most interesting implementation, from Infernals, really just added another meta-system that you had to layer on top of everything else to get back to "rock vs. scissors." Part of the remedy to this problem is to create a core system in which you can reasonably play out a battle.
(Holden)
On perfects:
"Heavenly Guardian Defense" is still a Charm that exists.
Being able to burn X motes and just go "nope.jpg" in response to whatever your opponent did, whenever you want, is a horrible thing to put in a game, assuming you want that game to be interesting, tense, or any other positive adjectives.
Or to put a finer point on it:
You're speculating about implementation of perfects without yet knowing about the combat framework they occupy. I've said it before, I will say it again: EX3 battle engine does not look like EX1 or EX2 with some numbers rejiggled. It is something genuinely new.
(Plague of Hats)
Mechanically, the "nope.jpg" aspect of perfects was pretty goddamn boring. There are ways and ways to parry mountains or explore the ocean depths on a single held breath.
(John Mørke)
Perfect Defenses are just boring. A "nope" response to someone's painstakingly honed ultimate attack doesn't make your character look cool, it just makes your opponent look like shit...considering that you can pull the same response to anything he does. A perfect is only special if it's surprising and it happens when it isn't supposed to, and only happens once.
(Stephenls)
Okay, I wasn't going to start this discussion, but now that it's begun, best to have it.
Perfect effects as they existed in 1e and 2e are one of a number of things in Exalted I'd call "system-as-statement."
That is to say, they're a piece of mechanics that exist, or that the fanbase believes are important, not because of their mechanical effect but because of their rhetorical effect. Someone reading the mechanic goes "Wow!" and that influences their understanding of the setting. Other examples of this are, say, Mount Mostath's physical traits, Juggernaut's Magnitude rating, and the Wyld keyword as it applies to the Lunar Charmset.
(The Wyld keyword is a keyword that just means "This effect only works in the Wyld," and yet, only Charms in the Lunar Charmset carry it. Solars have several Charms that only work in the Wyld. Vocal portions of the fanbase got very angry when someone suggested the errata should give the Wyld keyword to those Solar Charms, because "The Wyld keyword is exclusive to Lunars.")
Someone reads Heavenly Guardian Defense, notices that it allows a Solar to parry a thrown mountain, and goes "Wow, Solars can parry a thrown mountain! That's awesome!" Someone reads Juggernaut's or Mostath's statblock and goes "Wow, Juggernaut's really strong! Like a Magnitude 10 army!" or "Wow, Mount Mostath is really tough! Hundreds of health levels!" Someone reads the Lunar exclusive keyword list and goes "Wow, Lunars have exclusive WYld magic!" In all cases the reader comes off as impressed, spreads the word about this fantastic exciting new thing, and talks about it to friends.
That nothing prevents Primordials from tossing mountains at Solars until they're mote-tapped, that there's no clear indication of exactly how Juggernaut's Magnitude 10 interfaces with the mass combat system (does it multiply his health levels by 10 or just his damage and soak?), that the combat system breaks down when you try to use it to fight Mount Mostath, and that there is no difference between a Charm that says "This only works in the Wyld" in its description and a Charm that has the Wyld keyword, all somehow fail to come up.
...
We're moving away from system-as-statement. Mechanics need to work at the table more than they need to impress readers. We want to keep the good parts of the stuff those mechanics represent -- Solars should be able to parry a mountain or explore the depths of the sea with only a single held breath -- but we are not attached to their current implementation, nor to the idea that the new implementation must necessarily carry as much immediately impressive rhetorical weight upon first read as the 1e and 2e implementations did.
Hmm.
I'm not the one writing the Charms. That said, there is very little effective difference between throwing someone so hard they die, and throwing someone so hard they crash through the sky and into Hell. Throwing someone so hard they die isn't that difficult to achieve; I mean, a throw is a combat maneuver and you typically try to kill people with those.
So for all I know, "This Charm triggers upon killing your opponent with a throw; you may activate it to leave your opponent alive but instead throw him so hard he crashes through the sky into Hell where he exists in a state of temporal stasis for five days until the time differential is accounted for" is an example of a custom Essence 6 Charm that some Exalt somewhere has. Or not! Keep in mind as you read this that I have not seen the new Charms; as the book's editor it's sort of important to leave me out of the process of drafting the actual text so I can see the typos as they exist now and not as they existed in earlier drafts I remember seeing in the past.
What do you mean by these terms? (short summary preferable)Lago PARANOIA wrote: a 4E D&D epic level fiasco or a 3E D&D epic level fiasco
4e epic is where you hit an epic orc with your epic sword or epic magic missile in an epic dungeonRadiantPhoenix wrote:What do you mean by these terms? (short summary preferable)Lago PARANOIA wrote: a 4E D&D epic level fiasco or a 3E D&D epic level fiasco