Thoughs on 'Rule Breaking'

[DrLoveMonkey]

So in a lot of campaigns have kind of BS things go on in them. For examples..

Contagion of Law: There's a contagion you can inflict on someone using the Contagion of Hate artifact. So as a disease any Solar healer could just- nope, it's not ACTUALLY a disease, it just functions like one in every way, but it's a mind thing, your Solar medicine charms specifically don't work on it.

Disease of an Evil Conscious: Oddly...just the same thing. It's a disease that no charm or sorcery can touch. Also in this adventure the Emerald Bull, an invincible behemoth that can only be tripped up or distracted, not incapacitated directly.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage: No teleportation can get you from floor to floor, the walls and floors are immune to magical destruction, no magical message can reach those within from without.

Forlorn Manor from Hundred Devil Night Parade: Ghost house's heart can not take any decisive damage and doesn't suffer initiative crash as long as it has one zombie remaining, and otherwise all other parts of the house are invincible and rebuild one round after being destroyed.

Fang Blossom, also from HDNP, although less of an 'adventure' here: Main bulb also just doesn't die no matter what until all its vines are dead first.



There's a lot of stuff in there that's just not something I think I would ever personally do? Does it ruin Exalted to tell the Dawn "Yeah I know you just dealt like, 60 damage to this thing, but as long as the Heart of Cruel Iron remains unshattered, it does not die"

Or does it actually bring it more in line with a lot of the myths associated with it? The hydra can't be slain by just chopping its head off, no matter how hard or how many times you do it, you need to burn the stumps. The Nemean Lion will not be slain by club or spear, it MUST be strangled, or it won't die. The Chimera can only be slain by driving a lead spear into its fire breathing mouth. A werewolf can't be killed by bronze or iron, only silver, if you don't have silver, you need to get some first.

Obviously it depends on the group and blah blah blah, but worth considering doing more of?

[Baaldam]

So in a lot of campaigns have kind of BS things go on in them. For examples..

Contagion of Law: There's a contagion you can inflict on someone using the Contagion of Hate artifact. So as a disease any Solar healer could just- nope, it's not ACTUALLY a disease, it just functions like one in every way, but it's a mind thing, your Solar medicine charms specifically don't work on it.

Disease of an Evil Conscious: Oddly...just the same thing. It's a disease that no charm or sorcery can touch. Also in this adventure the Emerald Bull, an invincible behemoth that can only be tripped up or distracted, not incapacitated directly.

"The sickness that no magic - except the one mandated MacGuffin/plot device the heroes must fetch - can cure." A classic of lazy writing supporting a railroad style plot. And nothing against the writers personally (maybe a little against editors that allow two such adventures to be roled out for the same game within an year of each other.... ), but i do call it lazy writing because that kind of thing has been a staple gimmick since at least the 90s, possibly the 80s if not before.

That said, according to your own words, the first adventure does come up with a rationale of sorts for why the charms and sorcery are not working (the people are not really sick, their conditions are pretty much letal hypochondria inspired by the evil artifact), what is a very nice touch imho, as it is something that the Storyteller can throw ideas from to either set up clues and hooks for the PCs to understand why it's not working and even attempt to come up with creative alternate solutions with varied degrees of risk or success.
Not sure that particular conceit would work for 3e Medicine charms, but the fact it is there to spark the imagination is a definite plus.

About the behemoth, i will have to read on it - immunities on itself are not exactly bad things, they just change some of the dynamics of a battle, if it will be a bad or good thing can depend a lot on setup, either by the writer in coming with fun explanations for why something does not work against a threat, or the individual ST, to telegraph things a bit, so the PCs can catch on something is amiss instead of being curbstomped blind out of ignorance.

Dungeon of the Mad Mage: No teleportation can get you from floor to floor, the walls and floors are immune to magical destruction, no magical message can reach those within from without.

The ultimate grandaddy of all nerf bats - "no teleport, no divination, no phasing/intangibility through these walls"
Not gonna lie, it's a cheap trick i hate with the burning wrath of a thousand raging suns. The cheat of a lazy writer that can't write adventures above a certain power level, so resorts to powering down any and all players to within its safety zone.... I hear an adventure has that, it's auto-ignore or rewrite on my part.

Forlorn Manor from Hundred Devil Night Parade: Ghost house's heart can not take any decisive damage and doesn't suffer initiative crash as long as it has one zombie remaining, and otherwise all other parts of the house are invincible and rebuild one round after being destroyed.

I wouldn't say it breaks the rules - powers that redirect damage to an adjacent object, minion or whatever are a thing, that ability of the Manor sounds kind of like that. Again, some set up on the ST's part that slashing the house's heart or just punching walls randomly is not working and then letting them scramble to think of what might be the house's trick is key. If anything, i might adjust the house's capacity to rebuild so it is not quite as instantaneous as you describe, what could lead to some complications and perhaps opportunities for the PCs to exploit.

Fang Blossom, also from HDNP, although less of an 'adventure' here: Main bulb also just doesn't die no matter what until all its vines are dead first.

Again, sounds more like situational immunity than rule-breaking per se - its a weed on magical steroids, killing the roots so it doesn't keep growing back is not a big leap of the imagination. Damn, one successful basic Lore roll would be enough of a clue for any character somewhat familiar with farming, gardening or plants per backstory, imho.

There's a lot of stuff in there that's just not something I think I would ever personally do? Does it ruin Exalted to tell the Dawn "Yeah I know you just dealt like, 60 damage to this thing, but as long as the Heart of Cruel Iron remains unshattered, it does not die"

Grapple or cut it limbs apart and then lock in a box that is too strong for the adversary to break out from on its own? I'm pretty sure a number of players would love the opportunity to play the "putting the immortal threat into imprisonment for aeons/eternity" fantasy classic trope. Or, if they are a bunch of twisted genius bastards, you could end with this.

Or does it actually bring it more in line with a lot of the myths associated with it? The hydra can't be slain by just chopping its head off, no matter how hard or how many times you do it, you need to burn the stumps. The Nemean Lion will not be slain by club or spear, it MUST be strangled, or it won't die. The Chimera can only be slain by driving a lead spear into its fire breathing mouth. A werewolf can't be killed by bronze or iron, only silver, if you don't have silver, you need to get some first.

As you can see from my commentary so far, i'm definitely into the later camp.

[DrLoveMonkey]

The ultimate grandaddy of all nerf bats - "no teleport, no divination, no phasing/intangibility through these walls"
Not gonna lie, it's a cheap trick i hate with the burning wrath of a thousand raging suns. The cheat of a lazy writer that can't write adventures above a certain power level, so resorts to powering down any and all players to within its safety zone.... I hear an adventure has that, it's auto-ignore or rewrite on my part.

There actually is a decent explanation for this one as well. The DotMM takes place in a tear in the Weave of Magic itself. Basically the ultimate foundation upon which all spells, magic, and even divinity itself is based. Then again, that doesn't make it automatically fun, and I understand why they had to do it. In previous editions of DnD you didn't have to go that far, gorgon blood stopped teleportation, so if you mix it into the mortar of your castle you've got a castle that you can't so much as misty step from room to room in.

I wouldn't say it breaks the rules - powers that redirect damage to an adjacent object, minion or whatever are a thing, that ability of the Manor sounds kind of like that.*snip*.

Maybe it doesn't break the rules exactly, but you're doing five times as much damage as the thing has health levels and it isn't even being scratched, because it still has a minion alive. It's not even shunting the damage to the minion, it's just invincible as long as it's not alone. I'm worried players might feel cheated because they figure if they just hit something hard enough that will eventually win the fight.

Which is I guess what I'm asking. If your character concept was a super badass fighting machine, would you feel cheated if you found something that you could only defeat in a specific way, which wasn't just hit it harder?

[DarkWolff]

Which is I guess what I'm asking. If your character concept was a super badass fighting machine, would you feel cheated if you found something that you could only defeat in a specific way, which wasn't just hit it harder?

It really depends on the implementation. If I'm staring down the thing, blow all my motes on a huge attack only ti have it literally ignore me, I'd definitely feel cheated...but only if I didn't know that was a possibility. If I went into the fight knowing this thing was nigh-unkillable and I through my whole pool at it to really test that...I'd be fine with the outcome. Alternatively, if I'm trying to come up with every type of trick I can to find it's secret weakness, that can be a pretty good scene.

[vwllss trnt prncss]

Which is I guess what I'm asking. If your character concept was a super badass fighting machine, would you feel cheated if you found something that you could only defeat in a specific way, which wasn't just hit it harder?

It depends on a few things.
First, if the combat engine gets turned onthen combat must work. If we roll Initiative and I can't withering-withering-decisive the thing, I'm going to call bullshit. Same goes for any other engine - if it's social influencing at me then it's not allowed to be unsocialinfluenceable.
Second, it has to still reward investment and lateral use of "not yet" options. If the yet-unkillable monster's "combat attacks" are something against which Parry/Evasion/Soak don't count, it's cheating. If I can't Smashing it aside to get past it before I find the mcguffin, it's cheating.
Third, it has to build heat instead of stealing my heat. And this is subjective as fuck. It has to make me feel things are getting tense in a way that empowers and hypes up my character's narrative position instead of just turning off my "badass murder-killer" character trait.
Fourth, it has to play by its own rules and those have to be pretty clear and pretty easily available. No vague handwavy bullshit. If the superplague is untreatable because it's fatal hypochondria, then anything that treats hyopchondria had damn well better work.
Fifth and most critically, it cannot have only only predefined solutions. If everything not on the Approved List fails, it's cheating, you're cheating, goodbye.

[vwllss trnt prncss]

Forlorn Manor from Hundred Devil Night Parade: Ghost house's heart can not take any decisive damage and doesn't suffer initiative crash as long as it has one zombie remaining, and otherwise all other parts of the house are invincible and rebuild one round after being destroyed.

Fang Blossom, also from HDNP, although less of an 'adventure' here: Main bulb also just doesn't die no matter what until all its vines are dead first.

I do not have a positive opinion of HDNP's mechanical writing overall, it's pretty sloppy. Both of those are poorly designed. Neither mandates an absolute negation, both would work quite well using existing mechanics. Defend Other comes to mind - give the zombies/vines a constant enhanced DO effect. There's no narrative reason why a Night can't just shank the heart or slip past the vines to toss a firebomb in the maw, so let them do it if they can get past the chaff. They're both the exact sort of thing I'd call bullshit on.

There's a lot of stuff in there that's just not something I think I would ever personally do? Does it ruin Exalted to tell the Dawn "Yeah I know you just dealt like, 60 damage to this thing, but as long as the Heart of Cruel Iron remains unshattered, it does not die"

Or does it actually bring it more in line with a lot of the myths associated with it? The hydra can't be slain by just chopping its head off, no matter how hard or how many times you do it, you need to burn the stumps. The Nemean Lion will not be slain by club or spear, it MUST be strangled, or it won't die. The Chimera can only be slain by driving a lead spear into its fire breathing mouth. A werewolf can't be killed by bronze or iron, only silver, if you don't have silver, you need to get some first.

Obviously it depends on the group and blah blah blah, but worth considering doing more of?

I feel that description of those Greek beasts is horribly off.
The Nemean Lion wasn't "can only die to strangling", it was just immune to mortal blades because it had superfur. Herakles could have drowned it, stabbed the inside of its mouth, fed it poison, tied it up and sat on it until it starved, cut it apart with its own claws, found a magic sword, etc. It also was explicitly vulnerable to being bludgeoned - Herakles stunned it with his club.
The hydra was immune to death by head loss and got stronger instead. No mention of immunity to non-head-related death, so most of the above might work. Even still, any means of preventing head-regrowth should work, not just fire. Its own toxins, for example, worked in one version of the myth.
The chimera was softened up with bowfire before the lead was used, and again that seems to just be the chosen method of murder not the sole method possible.
I feel this is a common issue - one known solution exists so it "must" be the one and only correct one. Which I feel is actually amythological! These heroes didn't go to a sage to find and enact the one true method, they thought on their feet and applied their combat abilities with a slight twist to overcome the issue.

[Heavy Arms]

So....
How would you force Exalted PCs to have to think on their feet to come up with unusual combat solutions instead of just using their best combat Charms to overpower enemies that are supposed to be beaten through lateral thinking?

If you take away the Fang Blossom's bullshit immunity... anything else you do to stop the Dawn or Night or whatever from just wiping it out in one swing is going to be equally bullshit... but maybe slightly better hidden because it's just couched better in the system mechanics ("the vines have perfect defense against sneak attacks and against combat attacks when using the Defend Other on behalf of the main bulb" has the same result as, "you have to take care of the vines first," even if it's not phrased that you have to kill the vines first).

All this stuff isn't great design, but there's a limit on how much better you can do while making it reasonable to use in the rules. Giving combat antagonists 2-3 pages of new mechanics just so they can actually stand up to 3-5 Exalted PCs for more than a round might mean less bullshit immunities and breaking the rules, but what ST wants to run that NPC now?

[DrLoveMonkey]

So....
How would you force Exalted PCs to have to think on their feet to come up with unusual combat solutions instead of just using their best combat Charms to overpower enemies that are supposed to be beaten through lateral thinking?

If you take away the Fang Blossom's bullshit immunity... anything else you do to stop the Dawn or Night or whatever from just wiping it out in one swing is going to be equally bullshit... but maybe slightly better hidden because it's just couched better in the system mechanics ("the vines have perfect defense against sneak attacks and against combat attacks when using the Defend Other on behalf of the main bulb" has the same result as, "you have to take care of the vines first," even if it's not phrased that you have to kill the vines first).

All this stuff isn't great design, but there's a limit on how much better you can do while making it reasonable to use in the rules. Giving combat antagonists 2-3 pages of new mechanics just so they can actually stand up to 3-5 Exalted PCs for more than a round might mean less bullshit immunities and breaking the rules, but what ST wants to run that NPC now?

I think they did that with the cockitrice and it didn’t really work. Like it’s a cool monster who's body is a poison blight on the land, ad who’s flaming stare burns you to a husk from the inside out, BUT if you have a mirror or a shining shield or something, you can trap it in its own gaze whereupon it will grapple itself to death. The issue being that the cockitrice is not actually very strong and a circle of mortals probably wouldn’t even consider it worth the effort to use the special reflection capturing rule.

[Lioness]

So....
How would you force Exalted PCs to have to think on their feet to come up with unusual combat solutions instead of just using their best combat Charms to overpower enemies that are supposed to be beaten through lateral thinking?

If you take away the Fang Blossom's bullshit immunity... anything else you do to stop the Dawn or Night or whatever from just wiping it out in one swing is going to be equally bullshit... but maybe slightly better hidden because it's just couched better in the system mechanics ("the vines have perfect defense against sneak attacks and against combat attacks when using the Defend Other on behalf of the main bulb" has the same result as, "you have to take care of the vines first," even if it's not phrased that you have to kill the vines first).

All this stuff isn't great design, but there's a limit on how much better you can do while making it reasonable to use in the rules. Giving combat antagonists 2-3 pages of new mechanics just so they can actually stand up to 3-5 Exalted PCs for more than a round might mean less bullshit immunities and breaking the rules, but what ST wants to run that NPC now?

Basically this, if there’s something in particular Exalted has done horribly wrong in the last few years it’s that it’s kinda forgotten that the ST is one of the players rather than a game running robot who has to outsmart all their players and have the mechanical insights of a developer. Don’t get me wrong I don’t want to return to high essence characters able to dominate PCs like the worst kind of self insert but god! Crucible can’t get here fast enough.

[Tiresias]

On some level, I think rules that break other rules are a conceit of RPGs and games in general. Sometimes, the DM wants to run a specific kind of story, and the players want to play a specific kind of story, and the story doesn't quite fit the rules for one reason or another, so laying down some railroads is reasonable. If everyone wants to do a dungeon crawl and the Wizard can blow throough the floors and walls, the dungeon crawl doesn't work, so banning teleportation and making the dungeon walls indestructible makes sense.

If you want to tell a story about an epidemic, the party's healer should be able to use their abilities, but if you want to use an epidemic as a premise for a McGuffin hunt, that's a completely different thing.

Multi-stage boss fights with specific weaknesses have been part of gaming for years too. I personally wouldn't use them all the time, but it is nice to have a model to work from if that's your thing.

[Heavy Arms]

Exception based design is essentially the core of Exalted's design for three editions now.

I am pretty sympathetic to finding things like Contagion of Law off-putting, because there's already a good way to handle it with the exception based rules that already exist. You don't actually need to give it bullshit immunity, just give it the Psyche Keyword and say you have to use magic that can explicitly contest or remove the effects of a Psyche tagged power before you can use Charms to treat the physical impacts of the disease.

While yeah, this is what I was just talking about with couching things in mechanical terms so that it goes over better ("Remove a Psyche based effect from a target," is not a common effect in the Charms, so making a Psyche based disease means Solar Medicine is useless without saying Solar Medicine is useless).

But to me reinventing the wheel is bad because it just increases the ST mental workload. If the rules already have a standardized exception... use it.

[vwllss trnt prncss]

So....
How would you force Exalted PCs to have to think on their feet to come up with unusual combat solutions instead of just using their best combat Charms to overpower enemies that are supposed to be beaten through lateral thinking?

If you take away the Fang Blossom's bullshit immunity... anything else you do to stop the Dawn or Night or whatever from just wiping it out in one swing is going to be equally bullshit... but maybe slightly better hidden because it's just couched better in the system mechanics ("the vines have perfect defense against sneak attacks and against combat attacks when using the Defend Other on behalf of the main bulb" has the same result as, "you have to take care of the vines first," even if it's not phrased that you have to kill the vines first).

All this stuff isn't great design, but there's a limit on how much better you can do while making it reasonable to use in the rules. Giving combat antagonists 2-3 pages of new mechanics just so they can actually stand up to 3-5 Exalted PCs for more than a round might mean less bullshit immunities and breaking the rules, but what ST wants to run that NPC now?

Pose problems, not solutions. Also accept that a heavily-invested Exalt should be able to do "the impossible".

The Fang Blossom has minions, leverage the DO rules like I said. Really leverage those minions by letting them DO in sum instead of in parallel so you have to work around sum(minion parry/2, divided before penalties) instead of max(minion parry). That right there is both effective in that it's a problem to get around, but also open-ended in that there's a lot of ways around it. Apply penalties, use unblockable, throw out area hazards, etc. Or just see if you can throw the needed fifteen successes at the problem.

The magical mindplague imposes a new negative Intimacy, and a successful roll against the disease can't decrease its intensity below the Intimacy's intensity unless the roll reached (difficulty * Intimacy) successes or was coupled with anti-Psyche effects. So break out the SI, or take actions that cause the Intimacies to weaken, or expunge the Psyche effect, or set up to just hammer the roll with hypermedicine.

The Nemean Lion divides raw damage and overwhelming by half against any weapon a mortal could use and again against edged weapons. So you can refuse to play by its terms and get a not-mortal unedged weapon, loophole it something that's not a weapon like grappling, etc. Or just do what Herc did and crash it by clobbering it on the head really hard so that half/quarter raw damage is still enough.

[Baaldam]

Exception based design is essentially the core of Exalted's design for three editions now.

I am pretty sympathetic to finding things like Contagion of Law off-putting, because there's already a good way to handle it with the exception based rules that already exist. You don't actually need to give it bullshit immunity, just give it the Psyche Keyword and say you have to use magic that can explicitly contest or remove the effects of a Psyche tagged power before you can use Charms to treat the physical impacts of the disease.

While yeah, this is what I was just talking about with couching things in mechanical terms so that it goes over better ("Remove a Psyche based effect from a target," is not a common effect in the Charms, so making a Psyche based disease means Solar Medicine is useless without saying Solar Medicine is useless).

But to me reinventing the wheel is bad because it just increases the ST mental workload. If the rules already have a standardized exception... use it.

Truth be told, i think most of the time the writer thought the plot device/macguffin hunt first and handwaved mechanics later.

Also, in retrospect it bothers me deeply that Exalted 2e had not one but TWO adventures centered on forcing on us a magical plague that can't be dealt with by any charms whatsoever, require questing for that plot device-mandated miracle cure AND were possibly jumpstarted by the actions of a Deathknight. Within a year from each other - what, was there some secret required quotas of these we were unaware of?

[Heavy Arms]

Pose problems, not solutions.

There's a certain level of semantic game there though. "You can't kill this thing until you deal with this other things," is a problem, even if it has an obvious solution in how the problem is phrased.

I mean, "you can't kill the Fang Blossom until you kill the vines," is already assuming you try to kill it instead of all sorts of creative ideas the players might come up with (which aren't necessarily supported by the adventure/etc.). The way the rules for it are done now, nothing stops you from all sorts of options if you want to trap/etc. it rather than kill it. If you have a PC with the right Charms not killing it might be easier than killing it (at least immediately). Because it doesn't actually have super high DV thanks to boosted vine DOs, it's not particularly hard for an Athletics/Brawl/Resistance Solar to just grapple it, carry/yeet it, and so on.

Also accept that a heavily-invested Exalt should be able to do "the impossible".

A constant problem for 3e antagonists is that lightly and medium invested Exalted can blow past them without these sorts of mechanical boosts. You do not need an invincible sword princess to deal with a DV of 5-7, which is where most non-Exalted foes are going to land if they're supposed to be a challenge. Killing a Fang Blossom RAW isn't anywhere near impossible, the fact that you can't kill the main bulb until all the vines are dead is pretty much the only thing that makes it moderately difficult.

The Fang Blossom has minions, leverage the DO rules like I said.

That's already how the thing works. The main body's DV is 0. It's only defense is the Parry 6 it gets from having vines that are dedicated to using DO.

Really leverage those minions by letting them DO in sum instead of in parallel so you have to work around sum(minion parry/2, divided before penalties) instead of max(minion parry). That right there is both effective in that it's a problem to get around, but also open-ended in that there's a lot of ways around it. Apply penalties, use unblockable, throw out area hazards, etc. Or just see if you can throw the needed fifteen successes at the problem.

Eh. To me this just does two thing: turn antagonist design into a bigger numbers arms race, and add more ST work. It could have a Parry of 30! OK, but then it's not attacking because all the vines are defending, and it has an Evasion of 1 so a decent unblockable decisive attack with take it out.

How does this really encourage making things more fun? How is it really encouraging the PCs to do anything more than either do the obvious (kill the vines first) or bust out Charms that turn the fight anticlimactic where the Charm selection won instead of cool tactics?

[vwllss trnt prncss]

There's a certain level of semantic game there though. "You can't kill this thing until you deal with this other things," is a problem, even if it has an obvious solution in how the problem is phrased.

I mean, "you can't kill the Fang Blossom until you kill the vines," is already assuming you try to kill it instead of all sorts of creative ideas the players might come up with (which aren't necessarily supported by the adventure/etc.). The way the rules for it are done now, nothing stops you from all sorts of options if you want to trap/etc. it rather than kill it. If you have a PC with the right Charms not killing it might be easier than killing it (at least immediately). Because it doesn't actually have super high DV thanks to boosted vine DOs, it's not particularly hard for an Athletics/Brawl/Resistance Solar to just grapple it, carry/yeet it, and so on.

No, no it's not a problem. It's a solution. The solution is "You have to kill the vines first", and that solution carries with it the problem of "Main body is un-decisiveable until then". If the solution didn't exist, the problem wouldn't either. When the problem exists because of the solution, you have solutions not problems. The opposite of good STing.
The proper way is to have the existence of the problem not depend on the existence of the solution.

A constant problem for 3e antagonists is that lightly and medium invested Exalted can blow past them without these sorts of mechanical boosts. You do not need an invincible sword princess to deal with a DV of 5-7, which is where most non-Exalted foes are going to land if they're supposed to be a challenge. Killing a Fang Blossom RAW isn't anywhere near impossible, the fact that you can't kill the main bulb until all the vines are dead is pretty much the only thing that makes it moderately difficult.

That is indeed a problem. But that problem has nothing to do with this. Ex3's antagonists having poorly chose numbers is irrelevant. The same plant with proper numbers and design but no invulnerability clause could also be equally difficult, without the bullshit.

That's already how the thing works. The main body's DV is 0. It's only defense is the Parry 6 it gets from having vines that are dedicated to using DO.

Eh. To me this just does two thing: turn antagonist design into a bigger numbers arms race, and add more ST work. It could have a Parry of 30! OK, but then it's not attacking because all the vines are defending, and it has an Evasion of 1 so a decent unblockable decisive attack with take it out.

I already addressed that. You even quoted me saying "like I said", don't ignore the first half of what I said and act like you scored points.

How does this really encourage making things more fun? How is it really encouraging the PCs to do anything more than either do the obvious (kill the vines first) or bust out Charms that turn the fight anticlimactic where the Charm selection won instead of cool tactics?

If you think "Here is the only solution, roll to achieve it" is fun instead of being an awful agencyless slog, we have such different expectations of an Exalted game that it's not worth continuing this conversation.