D&D mixed with Exalted

[endersdouble]

So, this summer, I'm doign some prepwork for a campaign I think I want to run next semester @ school.

My current thought is running a very traditional D&D-type setting (in line with Frank & K's material, complete with the Wish economy, etc.) grafted onto the Exalted crunch.

...I'm aware this may be a very stupid idea.

OK, let me back up and explain myself. I really like Exalted (I'm aware that some people on this board have a pathological hatred of WW/Storyteller...is there something horrid about it I'm missing? Please clue me in if so.) It has a great setting, and what I've always seen as Pretty Damn Good crunch. I also like D&D type games--high magic fantasy and dragonkilling and all that jazz. I can't stand D&D crunch (which I think is not unreasonable of me given that it sucks.

When I found Frank & K's stuff, my first thought was to run a RoW campaign--but then I realized that it's massively incomplete, and I decided I didn't want to write my own Book of Gears.

So my next thought was to basically set up a D&D campaign played with Exalted rules. I freely admit the systems don't mix wonderfully, but I think it could be quite good (though it would be a lot of work). My thought was to have PCs get the stats of Solars (except without castes or anima or charms flavored to be sun-like.) Instead of being a Fighter 7 or whatever, you'd just have a decent # of dots in Melee and have good Melee Charms.

My biggest single mechanical problem there is wizards--Exalted sorcery just has the wrong flavor for D&D. My best idea so far is allow Wizards to take a charm any number of times which allows them to learn a new level of D&D spells, then just assign each spell an Essence cost by level and just use D&D spells.

I think it could work--though I'd appreciate being told it couldn't if there's some big thing I'm missing--but this would obviously take a giant fuckton of work to put together. So:

...How fucking stupid am I?
...Any obvious pitfalls in this approach?
...Is there something simpler I'm missing which will allow me to play a working D&D game? I don't think the Frank & K stuff is really game-ready without Book of Gears & such, is it? (For that matter, any updated ETA for the next book?)
...any comments?

[shirak]

1181929018[/unixtime]]...How fvcking stupid am I?

Not much. Don't worry about it.

1181929018[/unixtime]]...Any obvious pitfalls in this approach?

Incredibly slow healing. We are talking about weeks of downtime between battles here.
Diseases. Non-Exalted can die from fucking cold (well, not really, but...)
Magic. There's a lot in the new Oedanol's Codex about mortal thaumaturgy. Worth a read.

1181929018[/unixtime]]...Is there something simpler I'm missing which will allow me to play a working D&D game? I don't think the Frank & K stuff is really game-ready without Book of Gears & such, is it? (For that matter, any updated ETA for the next book?)

Wish I knew...

1181929018[/unixtime]]...any comments?

You do realize that Exalted is a very different system to D&D, yes? The assumption of D&D is that you start as a wet tissue and end up bitch-slapping gods. The Exalted assumption is that you start bitch-slapping lesser gods and end up beating Cthulu.
So, really, it's easier (at least to me) to ignore/fix the bad parts of D&D than it is to adapt Exalted. But whatever rocks your boat man.

[endersdouble]

1181931463[/unixtime]]

1181929018[/unixtime]]...How fvcking stupid am I?

Not much. Don't worry about it.

Thanks.

1181931463[/unixtime]]

1181929018[/unixtime]]...Any obvious pitfalls in this approach?

Incredibly slow healing. We are talking about weeks of downtime between battles here.
Diseases. Non-Exalted can die from fvcking cold (well, not really, but...)
Magic. There's a lot in the new Oedanol's Codex about mortal thaumaturgy. Worth a read.

The slow healing is a bit of an issue, I suppose; note, however, I'm also transposing (probably?) most/all of D&D spellcasting in. That fixes a lot of slow healing. As to diseases, well, while there aren't "exalted" per se, PCs/the NPCs I care about will definitely count as them rule wise (no stupid diseases/can't use mook charms on them, etc.)
I'll have to take a look at OC. Don't currently own it.

1181931463[/unixtime]]

1181929018[/unixtime]]...any comments?

You do realize that Exalted is a very different system to D&D, yes? The assumption of D&D is that you start as a wet tissue and end up bitch-slapping gods. The Exalted assumption is that you start bitch-slapping lesser gods and end up beating Cthulu.
So, really, it's easier (at least to me) to ignore/fix the bad parts of D&D than it is to adapt Exalted. But whatever rocks your boat man.

I'm aware of the different assumptions, yes. That's why I want the Exalted system--I want the power level of exalted with the high-fantasy-with-murder-and-mugging of D&D.

[shirak]

1181932539[/unixtime]]I'm also transposing (probably?) most/all of D&D spellcasting in. That fixes a lot of slow healing. As to diseases, well, while there aren't "exalted" per se, PCs/the NPCs I care about will definitely count as them rule wise (no stupid diseases/can't use mook charms on them, etc.)

Ambitious. Crazy, but ambitious. I like you.

1181932539[/unixtime]]I'm aware of the different assumptions, yes. That's why I want the Exalted system--I want the power level of exalted with the high-fantasy-with-murder-and-mugging of D&D.

What are you going to do about magic? The Charms system works pretty well and is the only reason Exalted rock. Without that... I don't know man. Changing a system at this scale really doesn't sit well with me. But, as I said. whatever rocks your boat. Post a draft and I'll take a look

[User3]

I once read, in a skim of Exalted, an ability that was like "jump 5miles x dots" or something like that.
I read the example below the ability, which was something about jumping over mountains...

... and ever since then I have been smitten with the possibilities of meshing the sheer überness of Exalted warriors with the voided suckage of D&D's.

Maybe this is the answer to D&D's lame classes like RAW Fighter and Barbarian.

Good luck with the ideas, I'll bookmark this thread (relevant to my interests!)

[JonSetanta]

Woops sorry to reply to myself but that last post was me. -_-;

[User3]

At risk of sounding like a broken record...

Has you read any of Frank's SAME material? It's a very basic, robust rules system which D&D-flavored rules are surprisingly easy to graft onto. You'd need to make some massive changes in how things work, but those changes are actually pretty basic and apply 'across the board'.

If you haven't read the SAME material, check it out! Try a google search of The Gaming Den or something. Even if you end up deciding that D&D-porting would be too much trouble, or that you'd rather use Exalted, it's worth reading.

[Lago_AM3P]

I once read, in a skim of Exalted, an ability that was like "jump 5miles x dots" or something like that.
I read the example below the ability, which was something about jumping over mountains...

... and ever since then I have been smitten with the possibilities of meshing the sheer überness of Exalted warriors with the voided suckage of D&D's.

The idea of Exalted heroes attaining better superpowers than D&D ones is, of course, an outright fabrication.

This is somewhat true at lower levels, but not really. To actually create a playable character, your charmset is probably going to be focused on a set of 'boring' offensive and defensive manuevers. To actually try to invest in the 'jump 25 miles' manuevers at low level is a folly.

And D&D spellcasters easily overtake Exalted ones, even crazy ones like Sidereal Martial Arts--except for a few blatantly broken ones like Obsidian Shards of Creation which has a charm of 'you tell the DM how you want the adventure to proceed, defying all logic or the wishes of everyone else'.

Play a 10th level cleric or wizard and play an Essence 5 Solar with a wide variety of charms. The cleric will have a lot more in his toolbox than the Solar, I'm so serious.

Exalted actually says in the book that one of its selling points is that you don't have to slug it out with a weak hero who is barely capable of killing giant rats. Well, unless the hero started off as something lame like a paladin he'll way overtake the Exalted hero in a short amount of time.

[shirak]

1183038040[/unixtime]]The idea of Exalted heroes attaining better superpowers than D&D ones is, of course, an outright fabrication.

This is somewhat true at lower levels, but not really. To actually create a playable character, your charmset is probably going to be focused on a set of 'boring' offensive and defensive manuevers. To actually try to invest in the 'jump 25 miles' manuevers at low level is a folly.

And D&D spellcasters easily overtake Exalted ones, even crazy ones like Sidereal Martial Arts--except for a few blatantly broken ones like Obsidian Shards of Creation which has a charm of 'you tell the DM how you want the adventure to proceed, defying all logic or the wishes of everyone else'.

Play a 10th level cleric or wizard and play an Essence 5 Solar with a wide variety of charms. The cleric will have a lot more in his toolbox than the Solar, I'm so serious.

Exalted actually says in the book that one of its selling points is that you don't have to slug it out with a weak hero who is barely capable of killing giant rats. Well, unless the hero started off as something lame like a paladin he'll way overtake the Exalted hero in a short amount of time.

Well, yes. And then again no. There are several kinds of Exalted:

Solars are much more focused but in their chosen field of expertise they fucking win. Period. Solars can break the adventure as an accidental side-effect of using one of their powers (damn you social perfects!!!!!)
Lunars have a much more "generic" toolkit. They are basically like druids in D&D except they have access to perfects and Sorcery and all their equipment is Wild-clasped by default.
Sidereals have a focused toolkit but it is very powerful (almost and in some cases more powerful than the Solar one even). Sidereals are supposed to run around manipulating things and they do that pretty well, despite Geoff's Astrology system.
Dragonbloods are like walking toolboxes. Practically all their Charms are of the "cute tricks" variety compared to, say, Solar charms but DBs have a lot of them.

In addition, specific things break the paradigm. Permanent Charm is a pretty serious thing in D20 but in Exalted Threefold Binding of the Heart is a pretty cheap Celestial Circle Sorcery spell.


On Obsidian Shards of Infinity. While this style is broken beyond belief, Breathing on the Black Mirror is the last Charm on the tree, it can only be used during "climactic scenes" and even then it only allows five results. Admittedly, one of the five is "You Win". I did say it was broken. What it mainly does is give control of the story's immediate direction to the player. I remain unconvinced that this is a bad thing given a half-way decent player.

[Lago_AM3P]

Dragonbloods are like walking toolboxes. Practically all their Charms are of the "cute tricks" variety compared to, say, Solar charms but DBs have a lot of them.

I don't know.

Dragonblood charms are explicitly designed to be weaker than Solars and they have about half the size of their essence pool. A Dragonblood can and will burn through their essence pool lickety-split in a way that would make a cleric's head spin. The fact that they can use reflexives freely do not help this.


WRT Solars, they start out with 10 charms and pay pretty prohibitive costs for new ones. The game is not designed around the assumption that a Solar warrior will suddenly become a master captain and bureaucrat. A Solar who has had the fortune to be trained in Sidereal Martial Arts will probably have to burn through all of their available charms to advance sufficiently in, say, Charcoal March of Spiders. They'll have a few excellencies because they're not stupid and they will almost certainly have Integrity-Protecting Prana (which you need not to get ubered at high level). But there really is no room for a Solar or anyone to branch out.

There are some exceptions, of course, like the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation which gives you attack, defense, charm negation, possession, and item creation in a fun and quick school. But most Solars tend to be specialized in a non-refundable way to an extent that a cleric or a wizard will roll their eyes at.

Plus, D&D spells have the advantage that A) there's no such thing as spell trees and B) spells just kick more ass. There is no easy way in Exalted to heal mass amounts of people while clerics get it as an afterthought. Even cheesy Exalted wizards who abuse the hell out of sorcery have trouble navigating across Creation while wizards do it without even caring. Hell, there is no way in Exalted to bring people back from the dead. If a cleric gets tired of cleric archering and wants to be a healer or battlefield nuker, they can do that without caring. A wizard pays a small amount. A sorceror can't do that on the fly but if he wants to suddenly change direction he isn't left holding the bag.

Mind you, charms are fun for the setting they're in, but to say that they exceed or even approach the versatility of the D&D engine ignores just how out-of-control the D&D engine.

[shirak]

1183064927[/unixtime]]Dragonblood charms are explicitly designed to be weaker than Solars and they have about half the size of their essence pool. A Dragonblood can and will burn through their essence pool lickety-split in a way that would make a cleric's head spin. The fact that they can use reflexives freely do not help this.

DBs have some of the cheapest Charms in Exalted and they can walk around with a dozen Hearthstones at character creation. Frankly, the DBs' problem is that they die before the power of Solar Charms long before they finish their pools.

1183064927[/unixtime]]WRT Solars, they start out with 10 charms and pay pretty prohibitive costs for new ones. The game is not designed around the assumption that a Solar warrior will suddenly become a master captain and bureaucrat. A Solar who has had the fortune to be trained in Sidereal Martial Arts will probably have to burn through all of their available charms to advance sufficiently in, say, Charcoal March of Spiders. They'll have a few excellencies because they're not stupid and they will almost certainly have Integrity-Protecting Prana (which you need not to get ubered at high level). But there really is no room for a Solar or anyone to branch out.

Hell no. The game specifically is designed around the fact that a Solar can wake up one morning, spend some XP and be better at Bureaucracy than the God of Bureaucracy. The other Exalts can do this to a lesser degree but all of them are supposed to be good at everything.

As for combat tactics, I agree on the Integrity Protecting Prana but no on the rest. Let's take Charcoal March of Spiders Style. You need Essence 4 and MA 5 and a guy to demonstrate to buy Maw of Dripping Venom and then you win any battle in which you can touch your opponent once.

Several other Styles have similar SoDs. The native trees often don't because they are of the Larger Attack And Damage variety and because the Essence minimums are too low (you need to buy a prerequisite or five to get to the Essence 3 or 4 effects).

1183064927[/unixtime]]There are some exceptions, of course, like the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation which gives you attack, defense, charm negation, possession, and item creation in a fun and quick school. But most Solars tend to be specialized in a non-refundable way to an extent that a cleric or a wizard will roll their eyes at.

The thing is, this specialization pays off. Solars can eventually kill armies with one swing of their oversized swords. They can just convince every soldier individually to shut the hell up and go stand in the corner until they're done having tea. Wizards are all-mighty. Solars just win.

1183064927[/unixtime]]Plus, D&D spells have the advantage that A) there's no such thing as spell trees and B) spells just kick more ass. There is no easy way in Exalted to heal mass amounts of people while clerics get it as an afterthought. Even cheesy Exalted wizards who abuse the hell out of sorcery have trouble navigating across Creation while wizards do it without even caring. Hell, there is no way in Exalted to bring people back from the dead. If a cleric gets tired of cleric archering and wants to be a healer or battlefield nuker, they can do that without caring. A wizard pays a small amount. A sorceror can't do that on the fly but if he wants to suddenly change direction he isn't left holding the bag.

Clerics can fully heal a lot of people, Exalted get to kill people so good that their next incarnation dies too. Yes, Exalted Sorcery doesn't have an analogue to Teleport Without Error. But neither does D20 Magic have an analogue to, say, Solar Sanctuary. They are different effects for different systems and comparing them won't get us anywhere.

[Lago_AM3P]

Hell no. The game specifically is designed around the fact that a Solar can wake up one morning, spend some XP and be better at Bureaucracy than the God of Bureaucracy. The other Exalts can do this to a lesser degree but all of them are supposed to be good at everything.

Then what's up with the section on advancement that states that the game is supposed to be expecting you to train and roleplay this newfound advancement? Furthermore, the XP to learn charms up trees is huge, the XP to add dots after character creation is painful, and still a Solar does not INSTANTLY learn charms. There's a chart AFAIR which details the amount of time you need to learn a charm.

Book Learning/Divine spellcasters in D&D, by contrast, can go down to the magic store in Amn and buy two scrolls that say 'become an awesome sea captain' and 'build a boat from garbage in the forest' and not only become badass sea captains but they get a boat to go with it to boot. It's seriously an afterthought for them. Exalted does everything in its power in both the mechanics and especially in the flavor text to prevent this from happening.

It's cheaper in metagame costs, it's easier in-game costs, and they don't have to jump through a bunch of storyline hoops to do it. D&D Spellcasters flat-out develop new schticks better than anyone else in RPGs that people still play.

As for combat tactics, I agree on the Integrity Protecting Prana but no on the rest. Let's take Charcoal March of Spiders Style. You need Essence 4 and MA 5 and a guy to demonstrate to buy Maw of Dripping Venom and then you win any battle in which you can touch your opponent once.

Several other Styles have similar SoDs. The native trees often don't because they are of the Larger Attack And Damage variety and because the Essence minimums are too low (you need to buy a prerequisite or five to get to the Essence 3 or 4 effects).

Ironically, that's what makes a lot of Sidereal Martial Arts and anything but direct damage useless against Solars in a one-on-one fight. High-level Solar combat involves the use of perfect defenses, attacks, and combos. Except for a few insanely broken trees like OSoC, Solars have enough charms up and running and more importantly the essence to support it that Sidereals or pretty much anyone except other Solars/Abyssals can break through. Seriously, while Charcoal March of Spiders' and Quicksilver Hand of Dreams' form charm is overall awesome, it won't bring a Solar to their knees. What the Solar will do is just use their cheaper perfect defenses and perfect attacks to force the Sidereal into a losing exchange and then just go for the kill.

The thing is, this specialization pays off. Solars can eventually kill armies with one swing of their oversized swords. They can just convince every soldier individually to shut the hell up and go stand in the corner until they're done having tea. Wizards are all-mighty. Solars just win.

While the melee charms are pretty much the only combat charms most Solars want, I am not aware of any charm printed that actually allows a Solar to do the sword-swinging thing.

Clerics can fully heal a lot of people, Exalted get to kill people so good that their next incarnation dies too. Yes, Exalted Sorcery doesn't have an analogue to Teleport Without Error. But neither does D20 Magic have an analogue to, say, Solar Sanctuary. They are different effects for different systems and comparing them won't get us anywhere.

I don't know what Solar Sanctuary is, but considering that high-level wizards and clerics get spells that allows them to casually alter causality and time I doubt it's a comparison.

But I'm not going to let you get off with that. One of the selling points of Exalted is that the protagonists in that game are supposed to DO more than D&D characters. This is not supported by the rules or the flavor text.

[shirak]

Dear Lago,
I am officially withdrawing from this discussion because I cannot defend my position. You are asking me to defend Exalted as a whole against D&D as a whole and I cannot do that until Whitewolf decides to publish Dreams of the First Age and we can finally see what the game is supposed to look like at higher Essence.

Btw, on the kill armies with a swing thing. It's what Grandmother Spider Mastery allows you to do. Solars should get this as a logical extension of their Melee tree. The Myriad of Shades, in his excellent expansion of the 1ed Solar melee tree places such a Charm at Essence 6, Melee 6.

[Lago_AM3P]

Btw, on the kill armies with a swing thing. It's what Grandmother Spider Mastery allows you to do. Solars should get this as a logical extension of their Melee tree. The Myriad of Shades, in his excellent expansion of the 1ed Solar melee tree places such a Charm at Essence 6, Melee 6.

The Scroll of the Monk has the Adamantine Fists of Battle Style and there isn't a charm that does a similar effect--but AFAIK the highest rated charm on the tree has a smaller effect on killing armies than Grandmother Spider Mastery but has a higher Melee/Essence Rating.

But that's fine. I'm happy with the role of Solars not being able to achieve these effects outside of SMA. Solars and Abyssals already pwn everyone with just the basic charms in the book.

Typical Solar Min-Maxxing:

Pick melee. You also want to get a daiklave and have it jaded up for the lowest speed rating.

Fill out the all of the excellencies for melee and dodge. Integrity is optional. You want to get your excellencies high enough and at a big enough of a discount so that you're forcing Sidereals and Lunars to resort to perfect defenses or risk getting ubered. Health rises much slower in this game than damage; if you don't dodge or block something at high level combat, you're toast. If you're planning to fight with teleport ambush, dip into the appropriate spells as well.

Build a lot of combos. You want combos that have the reflexives you need to survive. You'll also want a few perfects thrown in there, too. If you can, get a combo that helps you replenish your motes and willpower.

Lastly, pump up your mobility. The only thing the non-broken SMAs have on you is that they can run rings around you. You can close the gap by purchasing artifacts (in Wonders of the Lost Age) or dip into the appropriate trees yourself. Alternatively, you can bind some demons into soul crystals and get Principle of Motion, the best multi-action charm ever published. Then you can tell the Sidereals to go fuck themselves when they try to get away.

So here's how Solar vs. Anyone combat works. The Solar has his excellencies so high that the victim needs to stunt (bad idea; you need the stunts for willpower replenishment) or rely on perfects to keep up. In rare cases like hulked-out Lunars or Sidereals who are high up on the SMA tree, you might have to dish out perfects of your own. Remember to STUNT EVERYTHING to keep that willpower high. If you don't have a combo then you're toast.

If your DM doesn't allow you to stunt your perfects, don't lose heart. You are a SOLAR, which means that you get access to charms and effects that can replenish your willpower in a pinch.

Because your perfects are cheaper and you have a higher essence pool, combat pretty much devolves to keeping alive and forcing your opponent to make bad trades until they run out of motes and you go in for the kill.

For the rest of your life, take charms that will increase your essence pool. Alternatively, this is a good time to invest in Sidereal Martial Arts if your DM will let you. You will want to invest in effects that break the rules rather than add bonuses. Quicksilver Hand of Dreams, Meditation of War Mastery, and Obsidian Shards of Creation (BROKETY-BROKE) are really good choices. Prismatic Shards of Creation and Charcoal March of Spiders are great choices for Solars low on essence, since they hand out the best charms at relatively low level. Though the Prismatic Shards of Creation style is badass in itself.

Quicksilver Hands of Dreams also comes with the benefit that you can tell the DM to go fuck himself if he tells you that you can't get a teacher. Awesome.