My Problem With Chargen

[DrLoveMonkey]

I don't think "mortals matter" was ever supposed to mean that a single mortal swordsman has a very good chance of beating a Solar swordsman. More that dedicated mortals could affect exalts either through numbers or hitting them where they weren't skilled. Like a very social mortal might be able to convince a Dawn of something, maybe even of a lot. Or that several dedicated mortal heroes if they were badass enough and worked together could be a threat.

[Grod_the_giant]

I mean, they are significant, if you follow the advice in the book and don't prioritize maximizing your numbers at character creation. I had a player build an Eclipse Caste where a fight with a single Blood Ape was absolutely tense and flavorful.

But there's a difference between "a minor investment so I'm not sidelined for hours of real time" and "I'm min-maxing a combat monster." The complaint isn't that you can start with a character that trivializes most published foes, it's that doing so takes such a trivial effort. And you don't need 5/5/specialty/artifact to do it-- 3 Dex, 5 Melee, and a medium weapon is basically nothing, but it's enough to go face to face with almost every example supernatural antagonist. Add Excellent Strike and Durability of Oak (which, you know, the book tells you to do) and you'll make mincemeat of them.

Most monsters and demons and such seem to have been given die pools based on mortal capabilities, whereas the entire point of Solars is that "peak mortal capability" is, like, the bare minimum of what they can do.

[Sandact6]

So why print all the useless antagonists? Why do I have a folder full of antagonists with pools less than 10 dice? They have cool abilities, they have really awesome concepts, totally useless. Of course that is the way it works now, but I don't think it's that way it's supposed to work.

I answered your question, they do it for the Timmy’s. The idea is that if you run games for people who optimize their characters more regularly, then it’s easier to upscale enemies than downscale them. More experienced ST’s will know how to upscale, less experienced Timmy ST’s will not.

The thing is, I think that 3e basically DID pick a side. It's not even just apparent from the majority of the books, the developers stated that a design goal of theirs was to make it that way. They just fucked up in the chargen aspect, and I think it can and should be fixed.

No, they haven’t. There’s still an iffy consensus amongst people on some things. Take that original example of the five heroic mortals vs the dawn. Some ST’s may want to run this as each person being their own entity with active initiative tracks, others will just roll them into a size one battle group and call it a day. I’m on the latter side as five heroic mortals are narratively interesting as fighting as dishwater and obsoleted almost instantly fighting a Dawn, have been since 1e.

You may say otherwise, but to me it still seems they're trying to appeal to both

Well it breaks the game like a base 35 AC in DnD 5e breaks the game. True enemies could just have enemies have +20 attack bonuses, or I could only use Tiamat and Tarrasque and now that's just the game, the game where you fight Tiamat and Tarrasque. I consider that breaking the game though.

You’re cherrypicking extreme examples on this. There is an enormous difference between using Tiamat and Tarrasques every fight, things that are considered the very crème da la crème of the settings. The only thing remotely comparable in Exalted would be things such as Fakaru. Exalted are rare, but are far more numerous. Even if the PC’s are considered exceptional individuals, I don’t consider it odd that even higher end Essence 2 Exalted would be breaking 8-10 one their area of expertise, and Essence 2 Exalted are still somewhat common amongst the pool of Exalts.

I mean hell, isn’t Tiamat a DnD God? Like that’d be one of the Incarnae in exalted. That’s not a good example.

Nonsense! Limiting the dots limits both the ballooning effect of excellencies and also charm access.

A Solar with 5 dex and 5 melee with a specialty has a base decisive pool of 11, boostable to 21 with just the excellency. Also with 5 in melee he has access to Invincible Fury of the Dawn, letting him make a bunch of attacks in one turn supplemented at a huge discount by his other charms, and also access to Fivefold Bulwark Stance, to make himself immune to onslaught and make Dipping Swallow a 1m excellency that also cancels all other penalties.

A solar with 3 Dex and 3 Melee? They have a base pool of 6, boostable to 12, and their multi-attack charms and penalty negation stops at Bulwark Stance and Peony Blossom. Still good, still powerful, but not nearly as much. The 5s guy will trigger Peony Blossom and then reflexively activate IFotD, launching 5 attacks all with the same base accuracy as the other guy's full excellency accuracy.


I'm not saying that the Dawn should be limited like that, they're the fighting caste, their fighting should be impressive. If you're in a battle where it's just one Dawn against one or two other things like a storm serpent, then yeah that's maybe something that you should just skip, not worth it. But seven storm serpents against the full circle, that's different. Or, at least, I think should be different. Not even as like, Dawn takes 3, everyone else takes one or something either. If a few of the storm elementals are ganging up on one of the guys that isn't a Dawn, in other words not one of the fighting castes, the Dawn now needs IFotD, because he needs to end this fight, or at least bring it to the point where his side has the advantage.

I absolutely agree with you in the last paragraph. As far as I’m concerned people overblow Dawn castes and barring broken builds of completely busted and broken charms (lol Resistance) then they won’t have the raw resources to deal with all of these.

But Exalted wanted to get apart from WoD, where if you take a 5 in that game you’re given dirty glares by your ST. Again I see nothing wrong with that, but I’ll point that telling a player you can only have three max when the game RAW allows up to five right now feels like a gutpunch most of the time. Personally I think rather than banning higher ability levels it’d be easier to make a lifepath system. That way you hide the cap, more easily adjust well rounded characters, have new people understand what life is like in Creation more, and help fill out a backstory for your character.

Also what Heavyarms said, as you’ll need to completely rejigger the charm trees. Count how many Archery 1-3 charms exist, you’ll find it shockingly lacking. If you want to start the games with lower caps go ahead, just that these issues need to be addressed or else Archery characters are even shat on even more.

my point was that "mere mortal" foes like a guild factor might not be that much of a direct threat anymore - but... shai hulud (may his passing of gas cleanse my nostrils) or that level of threat should totally warrant player involvement. Point was that low level stuff woulddn't be that much fun to deal with anymore, so as a good ST, one should find greater challenges for the players

ornery storm serpents, or a kaiju, or a sidereal sending love-letters in your name to all the gods of disease in Yu-Shan - you know, stuff that's a bit more challenging to deal with than a guild factor sending a few hundred mercs to rough you up.

This.

Do they mortals have fewer mechanical options than a character with Charms? Absolutely. But my point is that the system has sufficient depth in base mechanics that it doesn't matter if the character has a lot of special abilities or not. Attributes, Abilities, Specialties, and Merits are give you more and more granular character development than a heck of a lot of other systems.

You mention the 5e Champion Fighter, but that's an issue because they can really only do one thing effectively--stand next to the foe and deal hit point damage. In Ex3, the withering/decisive split alone makes combat a lot more dynamic, but that's not all.

• Movement is far more of a tactical affair than in D&D.
• Flurries greatly expand your options on a given turn.
• Things like Gambits and Defend Other are actually worth using, in contrast to unboosted Shoves and completely unsupported ad-hoc maneuvers.
• Weapon properties add a whole new level of complexity, since at non-Exalted scale properties like Chopping and Disarming make a noticeable difference.

And unlike D&D, there are actual systems for doing stuff with skills, and the difference between two dots and five dots is much more significant than between d20+2 and d20+5.

No I fundamentally disagree with this. The base system simply doesn’t give mortals enough to hold my interest in the slightest. At least compared to alternatives like nWoD/CotD, ExWoD. Fate, Dark Heresy, L5R, or 2d20 Conan. Every single one of them is miles better at dealing with mortal players because they give widgets for people to use at the base level. Attributes, abilities, and specialties are literally just dice bonuses while merits are also background dots that rarely give additional mechanical depth. You can possibly get some mutations or cool sorcerer merits, but one involves being a sorcerer (big deal) while the other provides effects that provide middling bonuses compared to the alternatives I provided. This is because Exalted is a game about the Exalted, it literally says it on the tin. You could make some things in order to make it more interesting to mortals, but the amount required is to the point where I’d question why not just take one of the above games I mentioned and use those. They are designed with mortals in mind, and infinitely better at it.


Let’s use an example of a DnD 4e Fighter. Apologies for switching gears, but this is the game I played more extensively and more familiar with (compared to 5e where I don’t remember some exact rulings). DnD 4e Fighters have an incredible array of options at their disposal. Great Weapon (severely punish a mark), Sword and Board (forced shift cheese), Spear (reach abuse), tank builds, one handed grappler builds, and the list goes on. Compare this to a Ranger, who is a fast-moving death-dealing machine that hits like a truck.

A base ranger and fighter are more interesting than any mortal from Ex3 ever. They have far more variations on the builds than a mortal ever could in Ex3, and can do more things than raw numbers manipulation (weapons tags) or things involving gambits. There’s a big difference between the two other than “One swords good and take hits good, the other swords good and knows nature and stuff”. Aside from supernatural merits, you could port over some merits like Exalted to DnD 4e and not even bat an eyelash.

Note, I'm not calling you a moron or anything of the sort for having fun with a mortal-only game with Exalted. If you have fun then that's all the justification you need. I'm questioning why you'd recommend such a thing to others when other systems can an overall better experience for mortals. Heck, even some OSR games I've seen give more stuff than Exalted does for mortals.

I mean, they are significant, if you follow the advice in the book and don't prioritize maximizing your numbers at character creation. I had a player build an Eclipse Caste where a fight with a single Blood Ape was absolutely tense and flavorful.

This proves my point about Timmy’s exactly. Some characters will have a hard time against such things in the book. Others are going to laugh them off and crush them like a grape.

I’m not saying one method of play is inherently better than the other, but this is an important point to consider when making monsters, doubly so if you want to share with them the community. This is why when I make monsters I stat them lower, then make an EX-mode upgrade for people who do enjoy a little more spice.

[DrLoveMonkey]

I answered your question, they do it for the Timmy’s. The idea is that if you run games for people who optimize their characters more regularly, then it’s easier to upscale enemies than downscale them. More experienced ST’s will know how to upscale, less experienced Timmy ST’s will not.

I don't think it has to be that way necessarily though. Other games do this, DnD, MnM, Star Trek: Adventures, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, all games I've played in recent years that manage the feat. Several of those systems even include sharp combat divides between players, if you're not playing the fighter you're markedly worse in combat than the guy who is.

ST:A doesn't have to account for that kind of thing because you're really only going to have one security chief with a Security skill of 4 and Daring 12. When the shooting starts it's expected that Worf sprints up and bisects the Borg drone with his bat'leth while the doctor and engineering chief either hang back and provide supporting fire or performing other actions related to their specialties. It's not built to handle Crusher and LaForge also being basically as badass as Worf, because you can't actually build a character like that.

No, they haven’t. There’s still an iffy consensus amongst people on some things. Take that original example of the five heroic mortals vs the dawn. Some ST’s may want to run this as each person being their own entity with active initiative tracks, others will just roll them into a size one battle group and call it a day. I’m on the latter side as five heroic mortals are narratively interesting as fighting as dishwater and obsoleted almost instantly fighting a Dawn, have been since 1e.

You may say otherwise, but to me it still seems they're trying to appeal to both

If it's elite guard 1 though 5 with identity concealing helmets, then yeah probably a battlegroup, but consider instead this:

Astrid, the demon hunter. Contracted by the local garrison forces to help them hunt this anathema as they are considered as demonic as they come. She's an expert marksman and particularly adept at laying ambushes. As a testament to her skill when she takes on serious tasks she fills her quiver with arrows tipped with the stings of agata. Her armor though, she always wears, hardened hide of bloodapes underneath brass scales.

Johem, the juggernaut. A giant of a man, hailing from a kingdom some distance to the east. He's a fighter by trade, but not exactly a mercenary. He lives off the favours of the people that he helps, although sometimes his conscious battles his hungry stomach as to who those people are. When he started this life he fought bare skinned, but with each victory he allowed himself to don one more piece of his ancestral armor. Now he fights head to toe in exquisitely etched iron plate.

Ridley, the escaped assassin. A woman deadlier and more poisonous than nightshade. She's been wanted by magistrates of the Realm across three jurisdictions, recently caught, but now released and offered amnesty in order to help battle this enemy. Her favourite weapon, twin poisoned daggers, might just be tipped with her most prized possession; a scant few doses of actual yozi venom, obtained at a terrible price.

Cathak Eloi, swordsman son of the garrison commander. A relatively young man he's wanted nothing more than to study the blade, or one blade in particular, his father's old steel rapier Nail. He's done his best to be a good son at court and parties, but nothing ever held his love or attention like Nail. Though he is ashamed by his failure to exalt, it only drives him to be more willing to throw his life into any just cause.

Jin, the ronin. An outcast mortal warrior from Lookshy, Jin was once a part of an exploratory force funded by gens Karal into a relatively uncharted woodland. The commander at the time openly expressed concern, siting their small numbers and noted local tales of monstrosities, but in a political move to distract from a recent gaff they were ordered to push in anyway. What they found were fair folk. Their group fought bravely and hard, Jin more than most, his curved blade weaving calligraphy in ichor as they slayed their foes. In the end, of all the fairies and all the men only Jin survived. He threw his Lookshy badge at the commanding officer who ordered them in, and left, never to return.

THOSE five are not a battlegroup, but they are still mortals.

You’re cherrypicking extreme examples on this. There is an enormous difference between using Tiamat and Tarrasques every fight, things that are considered the very crème da la crème of the settings. The only thing remotely comparable in Exalted would be things such as Fakaru. Exalted are rare, but are far more numerous. Even if the PC’s are considered exceptional individuals, I don’t consider it odd that even higher end Essence 2 Exalted would be breaking 8-10 one their area of expertise, and Essence 2 Exalted are still somewhat common amongst the pool of Exalts.

Yeah they do exist, but they are supposed to be rare, and they're hard to run, and they're really samey compared to the list of options. I mean I've got DBs and Lunars, sure, and if I made a cadre of them at Essence 3-5 that can definitely be an encounter worth running, but how much cool shit am I throwing out then?

Buck ogres, manticores, cocatrice, living black holes, daiklave devouring elementals, swarms of flesh eating hive minded insects, ghosts made of barbed wire and the screams of the damned souls impaled on them....

To me? That's awesome. God damn it it's SO FUCKING AWESOME! It's a ghostly demon thing made out of long chains of barbed and bloody bone links, and impaled on it are the screaming souls of people that it's captured in the underworld. When it's threatened it spawns a horde of war ghosts from its coils to aid it in combat. War ghosts. The 7 dice attackers that they are. The Rantai itself is also pretty weak, like maybe if the warghosts had its statline, and it had a much better one I could use it.

I guess it's not awesome. I'll just go grab WFHW and put together another DB, and forget about the idea of my players battling a massive ghost-chain-demon from the bowels of the underworld.

This sucks, I don't like it, I don't want it, I want it to be different than this. I also don't want to go through the books slapping +5 onto all the QCs dicepools, and telling the player who took 5s in all combat traits that he's about the rough equivalent of a single war ghost.

But Exalted wanted to get apart from WoD, where if you take a 5 in that game you’re given dirty glares by your ST. Again I see nothing wrong with that
As a basis for a game that's perfectly fine, but that's not the game we got to function.

Also what Heavyarms said, as you’ll need to completely rejigger the charm trees. Count how many Archery 1-3 charms exist, you’ll find it shockingly lacking. If you want to start the games with lower caps go ahead, just that these issues need to be addressed or else Archery characters are even shat on even more.

It's not a very easy thing to fix, but I think saying you can take a 5, but if you're a twilight it's not in melee, it's maybe in Investigation. Sherlock Holmes looks like a bumbling chump next to you. Hercule Poirot licks your boots. Captain America, well he punches your face in pretty good still, but that's why you keep Thug the Dawn who Breaks Everything around. What's wrong with that? Is there anything inherently un-exalted about that?

I'm not talking about your in game experience. Everyone's in game experience is that the Sherlock Holmes guy is also a melee 5 master of the blade. I'm talking about what Exalts are presented to be in the books.

This.

Okay but that doesn't help me when there aren't greater challenges printed in the books. I'd have to make everything myself wholecloth, and then justify to my players why an enemy who normally has 4 Evasion now has 9, and who's bite attack of 8 accuracy and 10 damage is now 16 and 20. I would further have to tell them that their Dex 5 Melee 5, specialty, artifact blade doesn't really make them a badass as far as this game goes, it's just the floor. If you're the Dawn the only thing separating your combat skill from theirs is your Supernal ability, which isn't nothing, but it is all you have.

It'd be like a high seas game set in the West where all 5 players are Wits 5, Sail 5, specialty, with a 5 dot artifact ship, but the Eclipse is Supernal sail. For one, that's just stupid, how many things in Creation are going to challenge an armada of Sail 5 Solar captains in artifact 5 ships? Basically nothing, and so it should be, which makes your job as an ST really really hard. Also how does the Eclipse feel knowing that his particular Supernal is being chased by the other 4 in the group?

This is why I say my problem isn't with the antagonists, it's with chargen. The symptom is that barely any written antagonists are engaging to a party that maxes out all their stats, the cause is that the players are maxing out all their stats, the cause for that is because it's incredibly easy and very encouraged.

[JohnDoe244]

"It doesn't matter that there's only two spirits that can challenge PCs! Just use other Exalted, bro!"

>Gleaming Gneiss has an Excellency-less 9 dice attack and Parry 2 as her best defence
>She has one offensive and two defensive Charms
>Her two 5s are in Lore and Occult as she rocks Dex 3 Melee 3
>Because she isn't Merlin Mc Wonderwoman

****

Conversely, if you ran Gneiss as a PC against a hundred zombies...

Her attacks would hit over 95% of the time.
It will take her about five rounds to destroy the battlegroup. (Gaining ~4i each attack thanks to Break bonuses.)

The zombies hit her 38% of the time for ~2i a pop (after Charms and anima). (Damaging Gneiss by about ~0.76i per attack.)

It is very easy to set up a boss fight where the boss's zombie army will destroy the city unless one hero stands on the bridge and shouts "You Shall Not Pass".

****

If Gneiss was built 551 as Merlin Mc Wonderwoman:

The zombies would hit less than 5% of the time for 0.5i (minimum damage) each hit. (0.025i damage each attack.)

Gneiss would hit ~99.98% of the time and with average hit and damage rolls, takes out the battlegroup in two rounds with the standard Delay to Withering Clash then Decisive kill. Three rounds if she's farming the battlegroup for 15i to throw at the big boss.

****

The NPCs are internally consistent.
The sample PCs are internally consistent with each other and the NPCs.
The book gives internally consistent character creation advice which fits with both the system mechanics and sample characters (player and non-player).

Players who ignore that advice and make Aladin Odinson and Merlin Mc Wonderwoman trivialise 95+% of the game.

If you're having fun then play on.

But I am supremely confident that your bookish twilight who never touched a sword before Exalting isn't meant to start play with Dex 5 Melee 5 on the expectation that the ST will just boost all the NPC dicepools by +5.

[slovorg]

I've struggled with this quite a lot, and I am early into my campaigns still. I've found that the best solutions for me have been.

XP-gen. Using the same rules for creating a character as improving a character equals the optimization gap between players of varying optimization tendencies.

Starting as mortals and exalting after a bit. It helps players remind themselves of the recent mortality of their characters. It will disappear soon enough after exaltation.

Using a smaller group usually no more than 3 players. Having more players for me means that players specialize more and branch out less.

Being an absolute bastard with nasty rules, circumstances and happenstance. For example; A Camouflaged animal gain a situational bonus to stealth and it is used to navigating the jungle so negates the penalty to evasion, perception and movement. Players invest more in side skills, less used charms are bought and more motes are used to negate or circumvent those problems.

Narrate, but ignore playing lesser threats. I started my last session by describing how one character cleaned up a problematic shadowlands incident with a bunch of ghosts. It was planned well and victory was assured. The interesting thing about the session was what happened when she was away and her needing to sort that bit out.

Force requiring teachers above 3. If one wants something at 4 from character creation that requires a lot of xp for the abilities, the mentor merit and a sizeable part of their backstory linked to it. . This rule makes players actually think on where and how that skill came from. Plus, fleshes out the setting and a lot of plot comes from meeting new NPCs, seeking out teachers or befriending enemies to teach them. Or player characters teaching eacho ther.

These rules add up to players interacting more with NPCs, the environment, the backstory, each other and having those 5dots be a goal for the master swordsman, but not making it impossible to begin with 5 dots. But it takes commitment and not something you accidentally stumble into. No one becomes the best that has ever been without standing on the shoulders of giants. What makes exalted special is that they can leap from the shoulders of giants.

[DrLoveMonkey]

"It
But I am supremely confident that your bookish twilight who never touched a sword before Exalting isn't meant to start play with Dex 5 Melee 5 on the expectation that the ST will just boost all the NPC dicepools by +5.

I’m likewise pretty confident that every twilight isn’t supposed to have a throwaway line in their backstory about how they practiced sword fighting every day after their studies to justify melee 5. I mean, maybe some twilight has that but it’s not assumed every twilight or even most will.

[Moss Reynholm]

It's nice that we can all get together every six months like this isn't it?

(I'll see myself out...)

EDIT: slovorg - don't worry about struggling with this, as you can see you're very much not alone...

[Sandact6]

I don't think it has to be that way necessarily though. Other games do this, DnD, MnM, Star Trek: Adventures, Star Wars: Edge of the Empire, all games I've played in recent years that manage the feat. Several of those systems even include sharp combat divides between players, if you're not playing the fighter you're markedly worse in combat than the guy who is.

ST:A doesn't have to account for that kind of thing because you're really only going to have one security chief with a Security skill of 4 and Daring 12. When the shooting starts it's expected that Worf sprints up and bisects the Borg drone with his bat'leth while the doctor and engineering chief either hang back and provide supporting fire or performing other actions related to their specialties. It's not built to handle Crusher and LaForge also being basically as badass as Worf, because you can't actually build a character like that.

It really doesn’t matter. It’s possible to upscale things regardless of the setting or material. Things like DnD 4e have some pretty effective enemies, ones that are good for about 95% of the population. However, there are some groups that make me shudder in terms of their combat prowess and tactics, to the point where that you’d need to do additional things to the combat to remotely challenge them, such as additional enemies or bosses that deal more powerful attacks (Assuming they live past the first turn). This is the same in MnM. One character I made was a Saitama expy. He had super-speed and a feat that allowed him to attack another minion within range upon successfully KO’ing an opponent, this allowed him to quite easily take out an entire room if I felt like it. Likewise, my current character is a Cryptid Hunter. He’s really good at locking down supernatural critters but doesn’t do the greatest damage. A room full of grunts for my Saitama expy is nothing but a joke, but would be outright lethal to my Cryptid hunter.

This is what I mean by upscaling. It’s been done in every game that’s probably ever been made. Unless you’re really unlucky, then if you’re running a game for players who would tear the recommended encounter to shreds? You’ll likely need to upscale so that the players don’t become bored. If your players rip apart such encounters with casual ease, then you may have the chops as a gamemaster in order to upscale.

But here’s the thing: Such player counts are rare. Such people are probably 5% of the population. It makes absolutely zero sense to do such a thing. It is often far more practical to make things for the 95% crowd, and the 5% crowd can probably make crap up in order to deal with the more optimized players. An example of this is Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO) when the first raid known as Anton launched. It was so hard at the beginning that less than 5% of the playerbase was realistically geared enough to handle it. The rest of the game, the ones who had gear capable of handling the other toughest dungeons in the game got slaughtered by these raids and could only buy a slot to be carried. They basically made the raid to cater to the top dogs of the game, and alienated nearly everyone else. The raid needed to be nerfed substantially.

Yes I know DFO is an MMORPG, but it still illustrates my example very well.

If it's elite guard 1 though 5 with identity concealing helmets, then yeah probably a battlegroup, but consider instead this:

*Snip*

THOSE five are not a battlegroup, but they are still mortals.

Exactly what I meant, they’re nothing more than target practice. The only thing interesting with these characters is the narrative drives and potentially the ability for some outside the box thinking not possible with animals (Traps and whatnot). My issue is when it comes to battle? The only thing different between them is going to be slightly different numbers between them and one of them possibly having a nasty venom.

Let’s take an example and say these NPC’s were in DnD. The game has some methods to encourage to flesh them out. Astrid could have a bunch of traps around an arena (lair actions in 5e or traps in 4e), Johem could have a Fighters mark ability with a bunch of damage resistance which makes someone really think if they want to attack a squishier member or break their weapons against Johem, Ridley could land devastating blows with Rogue action, Eloi could hit like a truck in general, and Jin could be something like a battle master leader. Each of these function dramatically different from each other in combat. In Exalted mortals don’t have anywhere near that granularity. Virtually all of it is backloaded into charms. That is the issue I have with mortals in Exalted RAW.

Yeah they do exist, but they are supposed to be rare, and they're hard to run, and they're really samey compared to the list of options. I mean I've got DBs and Lunars, sure, and if I made a cadre of them at Essence 3-5 that can definitely be an encounter worth running, but how much cool shit am I throwing out then?

Buck ogres, manticores, cocatrice, living black holes, daiklave devouring elementals, swarms of flesh eating hive minded insects, ghosts made of barbed wire and the screams of the damned souls impaled on them....

To me? That's awesome. God damn it it's SO FUCKING AWESOME! It's a ghostly demon thing made out of long chains of barbed and bloody bone links, and impaled on it are the screaming souls of people that it's captured in the underworld. When it's threatened it spawns a horde of war ghosts from its coils to aid it in combat. War ghosts. The 7 dice attackers that they are. The Rantai itself is also pretty weak, like maybe if the warghosts had its statline, and it had a much better one I could use it.

I guess it's not awesome. I'll just go grab WFHW and put together another DB, and forget about the idea of my players battling a massive ghost-chain-demon from the bowels of the underworld.

The thing is it’s pretty easy to upscale those things. Add a commander capable of buffing something like the Buck ogres, manticores, or cocatrice. Living Black Holes, if not threatening to PC’s, could be threatening in the area with a bunch of civilians where collateral damage could be alarmingly high. Daiklave devouring elementals are a threat that will be instantly deleted on sight (Every player without exception has been *very* liberal in dealing with things that can take away their cool stuff), and so forth.

So for the Rantai? Yea, I think I would upgrade the stats slightly for my own game. Maybe the accuracy is bumped up to 14 or so. Maybe these are Rantai who have been buffed extensively by necromancer sorcerer (There’s a precedent for such a spell in 2e after all), maybe there’s a group of them, maybe this thing is akin to some sort of random encounter where you need to beat it really bloody fast before it makes too much noise and summons other hundreds of hostile ghosts nearby, or maybe such a thing is there to provide a rather potent distraction against the Abyssal necromancer in the scene, one that serves to amplify the dread you’re supposed to feel from this prince of the undead.

There are may ways to make it feel significant than just throwing it front of the players and going “Here’s spooky thing. Punch it until it goes away.”

This sucks, I don't like it, I don't want it, I want it to be different than this. I also don't want to go through the books slapping +5 onto all the QCs dicepools, and telling the player who took 5s in all combat traits that he's about the rough equivalent of a single war ghost.

Do you know the reason why I needed to increase the accuracy on that thing a bit? Because I need some way in hell of actually hitting my players. Yes I could stack onslaught, but often I’d need to stack so many that combat becomes clunky with that many active participants on the field (Plus it’s moot against Solars). Sadly, this is how the math works in the game.

Here’s the thing: When I want to win against an enemy, I want to win against them in style. I want to take this evil nasty ghost thing, then slam dunk them into next week by utterly annihilating them. Part of this comes from me knowing, narratively and mechanically, that this thing is a threat to me, and if I am careless then it can potentially give me a kick to the nuts. If that enemy has utterly no hope to pierce my defense? Then the illusion is cracked. The battle feels a bit emptier to me. The enemy is not beaten because of my own unique tactics or clever use of powers, but rather that my numbers were high enough that he’s barely a threat to me. There are still ways to make such an encounter tense or interesting as I pointed out before, but often just going “Here’s your enemy, it’s the strongest one in the area, beat him up” ain’t going to cut it.

Here’s a video that addresses what I’m saying. It mainly talks about video games, but he mentions it can be applied to other things. Tabletop is definitely one of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inEZ3917P3w

But here’s one thing that video didn’t mention: Devil May Cry and Bayonetta both have modes where casual Timmy players are able to play the games and have fun too. There’s not only an easy mode, but automatic combat systems to help them feel included. Some people may decry these systems, but I don’t see them as harmful. It just allows more people to play the game. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with playing a game on easy mode if that’s how you enjoy playing. Likewise there’s nothing wrong with me playing Dante Must Die difficulty on turbo mode where I forget the health bar exists because I never get hit. I avoid playing easy mode because I get bored, and I take off the auto-combat system as I enjoy the tactical depth the manual system provides.

And before you reply, I just want to be crystal clear: I’m not setting gatekeeping or saying “REAL people play at this level”. I’m just saying some people enjoy their games at different levels, and others may not find that experience enjoyable.

I'm not talking about your in-game experience. Everyone's in-game experience is that the Sherlock Holmes guy is also a melee 5 master of the blade. I'm talking about what Exalts are presented to be in the books.

Yes, and I fundamentally disagree with that. You may get away with that early on. Hell, you may get away with that later on because your character’s role isn’t direct combat and the storyteller knows damn well that you’re not intended to solo Octavian in straight-on combat. Rather your goal is to find out Octavian’s plan of taking over a Kingdom and using it to summon a hell gate so Octavian’s soldiers will begin pouring through in Creation. The Dawn cannot solve that problem with violence, and it will be Holmes specialty to find out where that gate under construction is. However, if Holmes guy has Investigation 4 when Essence 3 hits, I’m going to find that a bit odd, simply because at the very least this is when charms start requiring ability or attribute 5. Hell, mental and social are a bit more forgiving than combat so I won’t even mind if their Perception/Intelligence (attributes more commonly used for investigation) are at three.

Okay but that doesn't help me when there aren't greater challenges printed in the books. I'd have to make everything myself whole cloth, and then justify to my players why an enemy who normally has 4 Evasion now has 9, and who's bite attack of 8 accuracy and 10 damage is now 16 and 20. I would further have to tell them that their Dex 5 Melee 5, specialty, artifact blade doesn't really make them a badass as far as this game goes, it's just the floor. If you're the Dawn the only thing separating your combat skill from theirs is your Supernal ability, which isn't nothing, but it is all you have.

Yes, I can and have increased enemy stats before. I’ve also given them entirely new abilities at times in order to catch my players off guard and force them to re-evaluate the opponent. The thing that makes the Dawn a badass isn’t that he’s merely one of the best swordsmen who ever lived wielding a magical +3 golden sword. It’s that he’s started the game as the best swordsman who ever lived, has his powerful further amplified by magical powers (ones that they’ll have have far more of than their opponents), and have a magical sword that summons god damn volcanoes is what makes him special. He’ll cut down the chaff early in the game, and send a message to challengers later: Send someone worth my time, I’ve already beaten the others.

Now I’ll point out: Early game you can have enemies with lower stats. This is better as it helps new players learn things as well. In my own opinion it also makes narrative sense. But as I mentioned before, power attracts power. Other people who also have Dex 5 Melee 5 are going to come for you, ones with a different bag of tricks than you. In the same way that level 24 adventuers in DnD don’t deal with goblins unless they’re booting them out of a den for a new crib to make or for the lulz.
Lastly, if you give some sort of justification for the increased stats of an enemy players generally don’t care. If giant skeleton monster had 10 accuracy at the beginning of the game and the same one now has 13? Yea it’s an issue, but if it’s my first time seeing it then it’s not. Hell sometimes I need to nerf some things because the enemy stats are consistently out of wack with anything else in the book (Fahkaru’s soak, Elephant’s absurd stats).

It'd be like a high seas game set in the West where all 5 players are Wits 5, Sail 5, specialty, with a 5 dot artifact ship, but the Eclipse is Supernal sail. For one, that's just stupid, how many things in Creation are going to challenge an armada of Sail 5 Solar captains in artifact 5 ships? Basically nothing, and so it should be, which makes your job as an ST really really hard. Also how does the Eclipse feel knowing that his particular Supernal is being chased by the other 4 in the group?

You’re giving me ‘nam flashbacks right now, as I’m remembering a 2e game where I gave a PC a Dawning Sun battlecruiser.

Also remember what I said: Charms are the real measure of power. Yea, that Eclipse is going to rock some ass in that game. Ironically that wouldn’t be the thing I’d be worried about, but rather all those artifact ships because personally I’m not going through that nightmare again.

But if I had a group that had Dex 5 ability 5, speciality, and an artifact weapon? Yea, I’d allow it without a second thought. The charm selections of the players and the artifacts they bring to the table would all allow for different playstyles entirely.

This is why I say my problem isn't with the antagonists, it's with chargen. The symptom is that barely any written antagonists are engaging to a party that maxes out all their stats, the cause is that the players are maxing out all their stats, the cause for that is because it's incredibly easy and very encouraged.

Again, it is easier to buff up enemies than nerf PC’s. If your players agree to such a thing then that’s their choice. But to me your own putting a waiting limit on them, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the absolute first thing they do is get some things to 5 almost immediately. This isn’t merely because you get more dice and that’s good, but it’s also a “You must this tall to get cool shit” tier. If buying charms was divorced from Attribute/ability minimums in this way I wouldn’t care, but because they are I would. It spits in the face of my supernatural and bars me from some higher ability required stuff even at essence 1.

The NPCs are internally consistent.
The sample PCs are internally consistent with each other and the NPCs.
The book gives internally consistent character creation advice which fits with both the system mechanics and sample characters (player and non-player).

Players who ignore that advice and make Aladin Odinson and Merlin Mc Wonderwoman trivialise 95+% of the game.

If you're having fun then play on.

Thank you, yes.

But I also agree in space for alteration. In my game for example, Deled is Essence 4 and a lot stronger than normal. This is because he’s been fighting along the PC’s (Dragonblooded in charge of Lap) and has been constantly dealing with stuff that’s widely considered to be stronger than average shit in the setting due to plot reasons.

But I am supremely confident that your bookish twilight who never touched a sword before Exalting isn't meant to start play with Dex 5 Melee 5 on the expectation that the ST will just boost all the NPC dicepools by +5.

Yea this is where I’m going to call boosting for the sake of boosting bloody stupid. It’s like finding bandits with Dragonbone armour in Skyrim, or that one time an ST gave a mortal 11 defense in order to challenge his circle of Solars.

I won’t mind if the player starts with lower melee, because quite frankly combat wouldn’t be their primary focus. I’ll give them the talk if Sword Princess is in the group, but if they’re fine with that then cool. They can choose to remain or get a bit stronger. They can even get to Dex 5 Melee 5 in game and have a smattering of charms. Will the bookish Twilight old up to the Dawn in swordplay combat? Fuck no. But you only need a few Essence 1 charms to dramatically improve your combat capabilities and that bookish exalt can bring other things to the table such as Sorcery, demons, or uncovering valuable information. This is like other character roles in DnD 4e. You’re a Cleric, you’re not expected to deal the hundreds of damage the barbarian can bring. Your job is to keep everyone else alive and enhance what the team can already do.

[DrLoveMonkey]

It really doesn’t matter. It’s possible to upscale things regardless of the setting or material. Things like DnD 4e have some pretty effective enemies, ones that are good for about 95% of the population. However, there are some groups that make me shudder in terms of their combat prowess and tactics, to the point where that you’d need to do additional things to the combat to remotely challenge them, such as additional enemies or bosses that deal more powerful attacks (Assuming they live past the first turn). This is the same in MnM. One character I made was a Saitama expy. He had super-speed and a feat that allowed him to attack another minion within range upon successfully KO’ing an opponent, this allowed him to quite easily take out an entire room if I felt like it. Likewise, my current character is a Cryptid Hunter. He’s really good at locking down supernatural critters but doesn’t do the greatest damage. A room full of grunts for my Saitama expy is nothing but a joke, but would be outright lethal to my Cryptid hunter.

This is what I mean by upscaling. It’s been done in every game that’s probably ever been made. Unless you’re really unlucky, then if you’re running a game for players who would tear the recommended encounter to shreds? You’ll likely need to upscale so that the players don’t become bored. If your players rip apart such encounters with casual ease, then you may have the chops as a gamemaster in order to upscale.

But here’s the thing: Such player counts are rare. Such people are probably 5% of the population. It makes absolutely zero sense to do such a thing. It is often far more practical to make things for the 95% crowd, and the 5% crowd can probably make crap up in order to deal with the more optimized players. An example of this is Dungeon Fighter Online (DFO) when the first raid known as Anton launched. It was so hard at the beginning that less than 5% of the playerbase was realistically geared enough to handle it. The rest of the game, the ones who had gear capable of handling the other toughest dungeons in the game got slaughtered by these raids and could only buy a slot to be carried. They basically made the raid to cater to the top dogs of the game, and alienated nearly everyone else. The raid needed to be nerfed substantially.

Yes I know DFO is an MMORPG, but it still illustrates my example very well.

Right I'm with you there, you'll never stop that 5% of the playerbase from doing crazy optimized stuff. The things is, I don't really see taking 5 melee as crazily optimized stuff. Like if my issue was that every player was grabbing sorcery for Invulerable Skin of Bronze as a control, cast it every night before they regain willpower, then use a hearthstone that grants them additional willpower regen overnight to let them also cast Virtuous Guardian of Flame, and stack THAT with Mela's Coil, or equivalent armor which comes bundled with a daiklave, and then use the motes they saved on not attuning to a weapon to grab a belt of Shadow Walking and...yeah I'm not balancing for that.

This isn't that though, this is just popping 10% of your dots into combat related traits and that's it. Bringing it to an MMO, this would be like if there was a talent point you could spend to give yourself dual and triple classes. So now your mainline healer is also a full on tank, and a full on DPS. When all your dungeons are balanced around the idea that if the tank loses aggro and the boss starts hammering the healer it's a bad time, that's not a mechanic that's going to work when the healer just also takes hits like a tank.

Exactly what I meant, they’re nothing more than target practice. The only thing interesting with these characters is the narrative drives and potentially the ability for some outside the box thinking not possible with animals (Traps and whatnot). My issue is when it comes to battle? The only thing different between them is going to be slightly different numbers between them and one of them possibly having a nasty venom.

Let’s take an example and say these NPC’s were in DnD. The game has some methods to encourage to flesh them out. Astrid could have a bunch of traps around an arena (lair actions in 5e or traps in 4e), Johem could have a Fighters mark ability with a bunch of damage resistance which makes someone really think if they want to attack a squishier member or break their weapons against Johem, Ridley could land devastating blows with Rogue action, Eloi could hit like a truck in general, and Jin could be something like a battle master leader. Each of these function dramatically different from each other in combat. In Exalted mortals don’t have anywhere near that granularity. Virtually all of it is backloaded into charms. That is the issue I have with mortals in Exalted RAW.

Yeah, but just because they're not mechanically super deep and complex, why does that mean they can't be mechanically strong? If the Eclipse diplomat goes alone to speak with the king, and gets ambushed by those five, sure all they have is gambits and weapon tags to make their combat deep and involved, but as a ST I almost want them to be simple because I'm running five of them at once anyway, so it actually kind of works out. What doesn't work out is the five of them ganging up on the diplomat caste results in them being hopelessly outclassed because their attack pools are barely larger than the defense of their target.

There are may ways to make it feel significant than just throwing it front of the players and going “Here’s spooky thing. Punch it until it goes away.”

Agreed, but it's taking that option out of my toolbox. I can definitely run a fight with Pestletails where they do nothing the whole fight but use their action to Feat of Demolition a house, and it's all about killing them before they level the town. If you look at something like the death moa, it's not built to be that. Its merits are when it makes a decisive attack it can add overflow successes to damage, when it attacks or rushes a crashed enemy it adds two auto-successes to the roll, it can attack and clinch at Short range. It's an antagonist designed to be brawled with, to use it in any other way leaves all that behind and forces me to invent new things.

I could also buff them, say that they're special mutant death moa with 12 attack dice and 18 damage pecks. Then the hobgoblins they face are formed from the nightmares of war veterans, making them more skilled in combat, also giving them a buff.

Now though the guy who took Dex 5 and Melee 5 on his Twilight is noticing something. He's supposedly the best swordsman in the direction, and with Solar might boosting that, but he's not much more powerful than the mega-birds and hobgoblins he's been facing. He doesn't feel like he's the greatest solar swordsman in the direction. I've boosted the antagonists up to his level, so that he feels like he's a melee 2-3 Solar compared to everything else in the world. There are theoretically non-mutant death moa that exist that he'd trounce, but we never see them.

Here’s the thing: When I want to win against an enemy, I want to win against them in style. I want to take this evil nasty ghost thing, then slam dunk them into next week by utterly annihilating them.

snip

But here’s one thing that video didn’t mention: Devil May Cry and Bayonetta both have modes where casual Timmy players are able to play the games and have fun too. There’s not only an easy mode, but automatic combat systems to help them feel included. Some people may decry these systems, but I don’t see them as harmful. It just allows more people to play the game. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with playing a game on easy mode if that’s how you enjoy playing. Likewise there’s nothing wrong with me playing Dante Must Die difficulty on turbo mode where I forget the health bar exists because I never get hit. I avoid playing easy mode because I get bored, and I take off the auto-combat system as I enjoy the tactical depth the manual system provides.

Worth pointing out here, in DMC the auto combat system is not the default. In DMC 1 you actually have to unlock it by sucking enough first even. Exalted is a system with a melee charm tree 48 charms large, and that's not counting how charms interact with evocations, martial arts, weapon stats, the huge list of combat actions. I think it's a lot more like DMC where it's assumed the player will be doing manual mode, and if you can't...well Exalted Essence is a thing.

Either way though, taking melee 5 isn't the Timmy setting for the game. It's not like players need a boost to keep relevant, so you enable non-dawn casts to access the make-my-character-immune-to-90%-of-enemies option. It's more like the Dark Souls option to start as a depraved. Do you want to have weapons and armor, or do you want to hamstring yourself by starting with nothing?

So yeah, no wonder nobody's opting to hamstring themselves...but then the enemies are written like 4/5ths of the party decided to start as depraved. It's not even a player skill thing, there's no skill in having a defense of 7 against an attacker's 6 die pool. It's not like they're using ultimate system mastery to combo three different charms and backflip through the combat mechanics to ultimate glory, they just sit there untouchable because the dice don't line up.

Yes, and I fundamentally disagree with that. You may get away with that early on. Hell, you may get away with that later on because your character’s role isn’t direct combat and the storyteller knows damn well that you’re not intended to solo Octavian in straight-on combat. Rather your goal is to find out Octavian’s plan of taking over a Kingdom and using it to summon a hell gate so Octavian’s soldiers will begin pouring through in Creation. The Dawn cannot solve that problem with violence, and it will be Holmes specialty to find out where that gate under construction is. However, if Holmes guy has Investigation 4 when Essence 3 hits, I’m going to find that a bit odd, simply because at the very least this is when charms start requiring ability or attribute 5. Hell, mental and social are a bit more forgiving than combat so I won’t even mind if their Perception/Intelligence (attributes more commonly used for investigation) are at three.

For sure, for sure, but why does Holmes have to have Melee 5 at chargen? He should be amazing at his investigation stuff, but maybe when an elemental monster the size of a giant sequoia tree slams down its bite attack Holmes doesn't need to deftly parry the thing away with his blade with 97% reliability.

Also to be clear here, I'm not trying to TPK my party, that's not my goal, but maybe when that happens the supreme genius detective mind gets flung back, and now has to recover himself by striking at the monster, while the Dawn wrangles its neck into a grapple with his arms like coiled dragons.

Yes, I can and have increased enemy stats before. I’ve also given them entirely new abilities at times in order to catch my players off guard and force them to re-evaluate the opponent. The thing that makes the Dawn a badass isn’t that he’s merely one of the best swordsmen who ever lived wielding a magical +3 golden sword. It’s that he’s started the game as the best swordsman who ever lived, has his powerful further amplified by magical powers (ones that they’ll have have far more of than their opponents), and have a magical sword that summons god damn volcanoes is what makes him special. He’ll cut down the chaff early in the game, and send a message to challengers later: Send someone worth my time, I’ve already beaten the others.

Again, the Dawn swordsman does that, yes, absolutely yes. Why does the Twilight investigator do that? Why does the Dynast who sent a swarm of horse sized demon-wasps to Hurcule Poirot's house get them sent pack to him in pieces with a note saying "btw, I'm the greatest detective this plane of existence has seen for three millennia...also I'm badass enough that a swarm of giant demonic asshole bees don't phase me."

Again, it is easier to buff up enemies than nerf PC’s. If your players agree to such a thing then that’s their choice. But to me your own putting a waiting limit on them, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the absolute first thing they do is get some things to 5 almost immediately. This isn’t merely because you get more dice and that’s good, but it’s also a “You must this tall to get cool shit” tier. If buying charms was divorced from Attribute/ability minimums in this way I wouldn’t care, but because they are I would. It spits in the face of my supernatural and bars me from some higher ability required stuff even at essence 1.

Well part of that is I think the cool shit for the investigator should be in Investigation and Awareness and stuff. Okay so they only get Excellent Strike, Fire and Stones Strike, One Weapon Two Blows, Peony Blossom Attack, Dipping Swallow Defense, Bulwark Stance, Call the Blade, Summon the Loyal Steel, Nimble Reaving Wind, Arc Shedding Rain Technique, Hail Shattering Practice, and any evocations they meet the Essence prerequisites for.

They're the detective, their awesome cool shit abilities are Mind Manse Palace and Truth Rendering Attitude, and Ten Magistrate Eyes. I would say that eleven melee charms, plus any evocations they want to get from their weapon, if they want an artifact weapon, could be enough for the detective character to have fun with. He's not the melee supernal Dawn.

The upshot of this, is that if they enter combat along side the Dawn, I can just use pretty well straight book antagonists, because even though they'll plink off the Dawn, the Twilight will actually engage with them. They might even get to the point where the Dawn feels he's really needed for his skill which is leaps and bounds better than the detective. Which makes up for the Dawn sitting there with his Investigation 0 watching the Twilight piece together the entire crime based off one scrap of cloth.

[JohnDoe244]

Help me with the "Timmy" thing.

In Magic the Gathering, a Timmy is someone who pulls off unexpected combos.
In golf, a Timmy is someone who plays very badly and might not show up to the game.
In South Park, Timmy is a disabled character with "a strange combination of palsy and Tourettes".

I'm straight-up not following what I'm supposed to be gleaning from the use of the word "Timmy" here.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Help me with the "Timmy" thing.

In Magic the Gathering, a Timmy is someone who pulls off unexpected combos.
In golf, a Timmy is someone who plays very badly and might not show up to the game.
In South Park, Timmy is a disabled character with "a strange combination of palsy and Tourettes".

I'm straight-up not following what I'm supposed to be gleaning from the use of the word "Timmy" here.

I believe it’s the idea that somebody might be playing a character that has difficulty remembering all the moving parts of the system, charms especially, like they might have to look up excellent strike every time and half the time they forget they have excellent strike. Designing for Timmy is designing the badass monsters of the setting to be easily trounceable by somebody who may forget that excellencies are a thing.

[JohnDoe244]

I believe it’s the idea that somebody might be playing a character that has difficulty remembering all the moving parts of the system, charms especially, like they might have to look up excellent strike every time and half the time they forget they have excellent strike. Designing for Timmy is designing the badass monsters of the setting to be easily trounceable by somebody who may forget that excellencies are a thing.

That's dumb.

[DrLoveMonkey]

That's dumb.

I have heard stories about people who play like that. Like they often had to be reminded by their ST "remember now, you have an excellency, which means you can spend motes to increase that pool if you want" but I have to say I've never played with a group like that. Everyone at my local game store and all my home games have been with Exalted players who at the very least had a good grasp on their basic charms.

[JohnDoe244]

I have heard stories about people who play like that. Like they often had to be reminded by their ST "remember now, you have an excellency, which means you can spend motes to increase that pool if you want" but I have to say I've never played with a group like that. Everyone at my local game store and all my home games have been with Exalted players who at the very least had a good grasp on their basic charms.

Oh not the players. I have to prod my players into remembering what's on their sheets. I think "Timmy" is a bit degrogatory but I played a two year Pathfinder campaign with someone who asked every combat what they added to their d20 roll to hit. The players exist, no doubt.

I meant game design.

Why would you design adversaries for game as complicated as Exalted for players who can't play Exalted?

That doesn't make sense. It's dumb.

"We made zombie wounds difficulty 5 to avoid infection, assuming that your players will forget that they're immune to infected wounds and that you'll forget that the zombies have this ability."

That's dumb.

Like, that's the worst choice that Holden and Morke ever made (and it's flabberghasting that Vance and Minton have taken it forward)... or the game isn't designed on the assumption that you'll take fifteen Melee Charms but never use them because you don't remember what they do.