2e: Biggest problems fix ?

[Cruzwindt]

As we all know, the 2e game mechanics is greatly flawed. So I made this post so anyone can share their own favorite fixes for it. In my opinion 2e's biggest flaws are paranoia combat, and social fu. So, can we fix it ?!, well probably not but we can at least make it less bad.
For paranoia combat I had a kinda complicated fix.
I introduce an anime-sque system. As far as I've understand it, paranoia combat goes around two axis, mote efficiency and insta death.
So, to fix insta death I simply multiply the effects of Ox Body technique adding HPs to the game, so a solar OBT gives 9 health levels instead of 3, a Lunar gives 12, and so on.
And for the mote efficiency part, I made a system where a character has a limit to how much essence it can spend on excellencies and charms in general, and that's about combat mindset.
A character can either fight lightly, normally, or going all out. This is supposed to emulate anime's characters who don't go all out with every single ant that appears before them. So a character fighting lightly can only spend from 0-35% of it's motes in excellencies and use 1 charm. One fighting normally can use from 35-65% of it's motes and use 3 charms, note that it cannot use less than 35% of it's motes. And one going all out must use from from 65-100% of it's motes and can use all charms it wants. To change it's mindset a character must pay 1WP or use a 2 dice stunt, to change 2 mindset you must either pay 2 WP or use a 3 dice stunt.
Finally, to use perfect defenses you must also pay 50% of the enemy's motes used to perform the attack you are defending or a WP.

I admit it's kinda hard to follow, but you can write how much essence a character can spend and it makes it easir.

For Social combat I had a more simply fix. First off, rolls, ain't representations of separate attempts to convince someone, it's just a single attempt of so in a conversation, you can use multiple attacks to represent insistence in something. Also there is a minimum number of 3 attempts and after that you must wait for another scene. The other combatant doesn't have to take any action and doing so doesn't lower his MDV, neither does yours ( why someone asking for your money should be more eager to accept murder his own wife ?! )
Also WP is tracked for different things, if you want to convince someone with 7WP from killing someone you must drain that 7 WP, if you after draining that WP want to convince him of something else, you need to drain another 7wp. In other words, every thing you want to convince someone has it's own WP Hit points, so the ask spam is over. Cuz it was seriously dumb to do something like this
PC Hey give me all your money
NPC NO!
PC Let me take your house
NPC Of course no !
PC Can I at least bang your wife ?
NPC N... NO !.
PC Ok but betray your king for me so I can become the ruler.
NPC.... ok fine.

Anyione else has any fix for these or other problems that wants to share ?

[The Wizard of Oz]

I know this is a really trite answer, but I found the best fix for 2nd ed combat and social-fu is 3rd ed. The combats are better balanced, faster and more fun, and the social-fu is more interesting (though it's not quite as different as it looks at first glance, and I don't like the Solar presence and performance trees). I find paranoia combat just isn't a worry.

3rd ed does have its weaknesses, and there are parts some people hate (the craft system, the reduced emphasis on magitech) but frankly, those are easier to fix than 2nd ed combat.

[Elfive]

Mmn. With 3e out people just don't put as much effort into overhauling 2e any more. Why try to fix the old busted system when the new hotness is available?

[armyofwhispers]

Mmn. With 3e out people just don't put as much effort into overhauling 2e any more. Why try to fix the old busted system when the new hotness is available?

Especially when pretty much all the problems with the old system are gone. There are new issues and it's but perfect, but the likelihood of a ST doing a TPK by accident is far, far lower

[Stephen Lea Sheppard]

Don't! :clap: Nerf! :clap: Perfects! :clap: Before! :clap: Addressing! :clap: Lethality!

[The Wizard of Oz]

Very, very important. An Abyssal making a magical flurry of 3-5 attacks with a Grand Goremaul is not something that can be dealt without a paranoia-suite; making the perfect defences cost more isn't really the solution (and honestly, that's one charm plus excellency, so your solution I'm afraid doesn't stop that either, though I can see where you're coming from).

[Accelerator]

I think someone should lower the damage dealt by the weapons. Too much. And increase the soak. And add more health levels.

[Simon Darkstep]

I liked the Ex2 intent in making Excellencies consistent. And I liked the idea of where they were going with Social and Mass (and Social Mass) Combat.

To unpack that a little: putting rules to a social scene can be tough to do in a RPG. On the one hand, you want to let the roleplay flow, but on the other, have some expectation of how to achieve some objective. Mass combat seemed to reinforce the idea that the Exalted were the movers and shakers on the battlefield, and the extras best stick close. To me, the point where those two fell down was in stretching the basic combat metaphor into shapes that didn't fit.

My all-time favorite social system is the Sway system from Chronicles of Darkness (Mirrors supplement, I think - don't have my books with me). That's because it's very simple, not even needing turns. Players & Storytellers can judge how much effort & progress they'll need in order to get their way, and the individual steps along the way can be handled by roleplay, existing dice pools, or some combination.

I like it a bit better than the current Doors system, though Doors did give me some nice ideas to consider.

Ex3's social system seems really good so far too, and I'm looking forward to working with it if I can ever get my Ex3 game started. In playtesting, though, I found myself going back to Sway, even if just to measure how the Scene was progressing.



Also, Ex2 wound up with power progression that made it seem easier to bypass story by punching it, and harder to engage with story without accidentally treading on it.

[Cruzwindt]

Mmn. With 3e out people just don't put as much effort into overhauling 2e any more. Why try to fix the old busted system when the new hotness is available?

Well, my biggest reason is because playing anything else than a DB and a Solar in 3e is pretty much homebrew, my group doesn't usually play solars, so it's DBs or nothing. And I'm one lazy guy to homebrew that much. Dunno if there are already books for those characters out ? It's been a while since I've read anything from 3e.

Also, and, this is my personal issue with 3e, is that although it fixes many of 2e's problems, despite the craft system but as Wizard said it's easily fixable, I just cannot force myself to like the combat system, sure it's way less broken than the previous editions , but making a distinction between an attack to really hurt the opponent and one to just make a feint takes away realism and immersion to me. I know the combat system needed a total rewrite but this is not exactly what I had in mind. Combat is a big part of exalted and if I homebrew that will not only be titanic, but also wreck the point of using 3e. I hope they find another system of combat that's more immersive if they make a 4ed. Thought I'll have to wait a loooong time for that.

Don't! :clap: Nerf! :clap: Perfects! :clap: Before! :clap: Addressing! :clap: Lethality!

good point haha. Lethality usually isn't a problem in my games since I control the enemies and I don't purposely kill the players if it can be avoided but, you're right. Gotta do something about that. As they've said before, make armor more protective, or perhaps something else.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Make "multiple attacks" into a damage boost to a single attack that doesn't count versus hardness (as opposed to fierce blows enhancing one attack but making it punch through a bit more). Let social combat and physical combat occur at the same time, so that the perfect defense against someone trying to change your mind is no longer to draw a sword on them (it's not going to keep them from talking). Replace mass combat with 3e's battle groups because it's seriously too good of an idea to not use. Beef up Guard so that it can grant temporary boosts to soak, ablative health levels, halve effective extra attack successes to determine raw damage, or just something to enable even mere mortals hang on just a wee bit longer before Goku gets back from Snake Way - possibly even lasting after the Guard action ends, as long as it took up the full three ticks. Said bonuses, of course, would reset rather than stack if taking another Guard action before the bonuses expired.

Also, replace most of the Lunar Charms, in terms of mechanics, with Alchemical equivalents. Like 1e, like 2e...

[Elfive]

but making a distinction between an attack to really hurt the opponent and one to just make a feint takes away realism and immersion to me.

A withering attack isn't a feint. Common misconception.

It's an entirely serious attack that out-of-universe has be preordained to be non lethal for the purposes of cinematography.

[Meianno Yuurei]

^ This, yes. 2e's theory of combat was "Everyone makes attacks and 99% of them are gonna miss anyway because they're just to deplete the mote pool of the target so that the final 1% can instantly splatter them". This resulted in the most boring game of pattycake ever.

3e's theory of combat is kind of leaning into this; most attacks exist to shift the flow of combat mechanically. Even though you know just the same that the attack isn't going to "hit" in the sense of "it is not going to deal physical damage to their health levels" just the same as 90% of attacks in 2e, the fact that you don't HAVE to worry about "was it a hit or not" means stunts can be more dramatic. The strike that glances off armor and sends them skidding backwards or overhead hammer blow that shatters the ground as they barely escape the blow.

The attacks are, in-character, fully intended to harm the enemy. We just accept, as an out-of-character conceit, that they aren't going to cause Health Level Harm. They corner the opponent, force them into a disadvantageous position, exhaust them by making them dodge away. They cause harm in the sense that the opponent has to spend motes and potentially loses initiative, maybe gets crashed which puts them into a precarious position for a Final Blow, but not having to go "I'm gonna write this big stunt even thouhg he's just gonna 4m (8m in 2.5) perfect it" means combat stays engaging.

[Cruzwindt]

A withering attack isn't a feint. Common misconception.

It's an entirely serious attack that out-of-universe has be preordained to be non lethal for the purposes of cinematography.

I know, and that's exactly my problem with it, I know beforehand that attack I'm rolling will make no damage, yet I have to describe my character believing he will make damage, It gnaws away my realism and immersion of the rol.
It's pretty similar to the same thing social fu did wrong , in it's own way, it did the same with the realism of the conversation by making turns on a debate or stating that every form of conversation was a debate, it took away realism and immersion on the role, that's pretty much why I throw it all away on my games.

^ This, yes. 2e's theory of combat was "Everyone makes attacks and 99% of them are gonna miss anyway because they're just to deplete the mote pool of the target so that the final 1% can instantly splatter them". This resulted in the most boring game of pattycake ever.

3e's theory of combat is kind of leaning into this; most attacks exist to shift the flow of combat mechanically. Even though you know just the same that the attack isn't going to "hit" in the sense of "it is not going to deal physical damage to their health levels" just the same as 90% of attacks in 2e, the fact that you don't HAVE to worry about "was it a hit or not" means stunts can be more dramatic. The strike that glances off armor and sends them skidding backwards or overhead hammer blow that shatters the ground as they barely escape the blow.

The attacks are, in-character, fully intended to harm the enemy. We just accept, as an out-of-character conceit, that they aren't going to cause Health Level Harm. They corner the opponent, force them into a disadvantageous position, exhaust them by making them dodge away. They cause harm in the sense that the opponent has to spend motes and potentially loses initiative, maybe gets crashed which puts them into a precarious position for a Final Blow, but not having to go "I'm gonna write this big stunt even thouhg he's just gonna 4m (8m in 2.5) perfect it" means combat stays engaging.

True, then again, in my table we do our best to not go insta death and paranoia combat, so combats tend to be pretty stable and fun. Not as realist as we would like but still a little better than what I've read others do. But yes, paranoia combat is bad for 2e.
But as I've said, the fix made for 3e doesn't convince. I agree that 2e paranoia combat needed a cure, but I don't like the one they found, I'm also aware that a lot of people loves it, just not me. -_O_-

[Stephen Lea Sheppard]

People spent the entire run of 2e looking for fixes for the lethality/perfect problem, though. By the latter half of 2e, "Don't nerf perfects before addressing lethality" wasn't an admonition, it was a catchphrase.

[Elfive]

Here's what you have to remember about withering. Exalted isn't just a game, it's a story. And in a story, powerful characters never go down in one hit.

You're not just trying to simulate your dude trying to murder another dude. You're choreographing a fight scene.