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[habitableexoplanet]

You're not counting Reed in the Wind, Drifting Leaf Elusion, Reflex Sidestep Technique, Ox-Body Technique, Blinding Battle Feint, and Stalking Wolf Attitude as combat charms?

Sensory Acuity Prana is a combat charm for some characters but not for this one because he is presumably using Blinding Battle Feint to Join Battle....

[habitableexoplanet]

There's been a few, mostly Single Point, and mostly by JohnDoe244, IIRC.
Steel Devil DB vs. Blood Apes

Single Point Solar vs. Melee Solar

Single Point Solar vs. Volfer

Single Point DB vs. Volfer

Dreaming Pearl Courtesan mini-adventure

I don't remember any fights with White Reaper or Black Claw....

[habitableexoplanet]

What is the decker problem?



I'm trying to make one right now, and currently working on converting the DB charmset (charm-by-charm, keeping all the sweet flavor). I'm going to think about Lunars next, and then Solars, which seem like the hardest, after.

If you make something I'll at least playtest it to see how it compares, and maybe use it....

[habitableexoplanet]

It's definitely possible that this is a dumb idea - I really haven't thought of it that much (and playing my character as a legendary hero instead of a really really fancy dude is not something I'm so good at yet).

But let me try to explain myself.

While some of those characters are highly specialized, others have a reasonable spread of different abilities. Hattori Hanzo the actual real life figure had impressive displays of Melee, War, some social skills, and Stealth.

You can be a legendary hero in Exalted taking 3-5 Charms in a particular Ability. You...

[habitableexoplanet]

It feels reasonable to me that a Lunar transformed into an Armored Kraken would roll Wits + Sail, which is the most relevant question. There seems to substantial overlap in the knowledge - like, catching up with a ship it would help to know how ships move, and stuff about wind and ocean currents. It also feels thematic.

What would be the other most reasonable choice? Wits + Athletics?...

[habitableexoplanet]

I made (with help) a first draft of an alternative naval system.

Design goals:

1. The system should a little more complicated than the existing system, but not a huge amount more.
2. In a fight between opponents that are evenly matched, or close to it, there should be some nonobvious strategic decisions.
3. A fight between evenly matched opponents should not last forever.
4. In a fight against a weaker opponent, it should not be trivial to shut down their attacks and emerge unscathed. Doing this requires some combination of luck, good strategy, and a substantially larger dice pool.

Not...

[habitableexoplanet]

I'm not sure what you disagree with in what I said - I think you might still be thinking about 1 enemy vs 3 PCs?

What I'm trying to say is that for a group of 3 Dragonblooded PCs, e.g. those 3 immaculates, one could make a Solar NPC that could challenge them without killing them - in this case, Invincible Sword Princess with a little bit less alpha strike ability.




I increasingly feel like character creation for Solar Exalted games should not usually involve choosing to play a combat expert or a socialite or whatever, but look more like choosing together...

[habitableexoplanet]

Good point.

If the PCs are Solars invested into combat, especially if they are combat-optimized, then it is very hard to create an enemy that will give them a challenge 3 on 1. There are few such enemies in the books, narratively speaking there are not supposed to be many creatures this powerful in the world, and it is not easy to design your own (at least not one that creates a fight that is both challenging and fun).

If the PCs are DBs, there do exist enemies which give them a challenge 3 on 1 - I would think for any given DB builds there should always be a Solar build...

[habitableexoplanet]

I thought about this a little, but given that the Solar Sail charmset does not seem well-balanced and also isn't particularly exciting (except for some Charms that don't interact directly with the naval combat system), the Dragonblooded Sail charmset is OK, and the Lunar Sail charmset is nonexistant, it might be better to redesign the system and redo a bunch of Charms rather than stay shackled to the current approach.

I guess they're not very likely to do that in Crucible of Legends though......

[habitableexoplanet]

We have 2 PCs and went 2 PCs vs. 6ish NPCs, which is similar, but I can't imagine, with a full circle, going up against 15 NPCs very often....

[habitableexoplanet]

If one of the Merits a Lunar chooses to grant with Beast-Soul Awakening Crucible has a prerequisite, what happens to characters granted the Merit who don't meet the prerequisite?

Should I assume that the trial is set up to weed out almost all such characters? For instance Ma-Ha-Suchi's trial sounds like it might weed out anyone who lacks the Stamina 3 or Resistance 3 to earn the Iron Stomach of his goatfolk.

What about their descendants? Is the Merit dormant until they meet the prerequisites?

[habitableexoplanet]

I was trying to figure out what the minimum for a campaign where the players get to places mainly by sailing there is (the minimum because JohnDoe244 was worried about having to homebrew too much). I would ideally like more, yeah.

30 interesting naval encounters in a campaign is probably where it makes sense to go to the full Rogue Trader / Star Trek Adventures style homebrew rather than running every single one as a series of Wits + Maneuverability + Sail rolls.

(I also think our campaign's sessions may be shorter than other people's, by possibly a factor of 2.)...

[habitableexoplanet]

(Wait are we talking about the ordinary combat system now? "Missing" is not really a thing in naval combat.)

I was thinking "non-trivial" as in from a narrative perspective it seems worth playing out (as opposed to "PCs come upon one ship of mortal pirates, with an interesting person captive onboard" or whatever reason you might have an encounter not worth rolling in your game) and then imagining that the ST would try to make it feel worth playing out from a gameplay perspective as well.

A basic test for this if the enemy gets to demonstrate...

[habitableexoplanet]

If you're not even trying to optimize, and just take Melee charms that look cool, you'll eventually get pretty good at nova-ing a couple weaker foes to start and then slowly grinding down the rest with the Fivefold Bulwark Stance strategy DrLoveMonkey mentioned. (This may even be the intended way to play...) Other charm trees probably aren't quite as good at this, but defeating multiple weaker foes is still not a rare occurrence.

[habitableexoplanet]

Yeah, I agree that asking the ST to do something like that is not a reasonable expectation. (Thought it might be fun to play a campaign with a lot of encounters where you accept that there will be a lot of half-baked homebrews based on numbers that the ST pulled out of their hat, and have fun figuring out which ones are pushovers, which ones are overpowered and kill you (I guess you would retcon this), which ones never get a chance to use their signature power, etc.)

I just think it might be cool to have a game with like 1 nontrivial naval encounter per 5 sessions, so 12 total essence...

[habitableexoplanet]

This makes a lot of sense although such a kraken shouldn't be the upper bound for power level of waterborne monsters any more than a tyrant lizard is the top land-based threats (just the top one that a Lunar can transform into). There are all kinds of Wyld behemoths, elemental behemoths, and stranger creatures in Creation's seas that should be potential antagonists for powerful Exalts.



This would be an improvement although it would make the system less interactive.

I feel like the system needs to have a little bit more strategic choice to be sufficiently...

[habitableexoplanet]

Could she befriend some Elementals that can produce cool displays of fire or other elements? Or other Spirits.

Of course if there are other Exalts participating in the performance they should show off their own appropriate abilities, but it sounds like probably not.

[habitableexoplanet]

Thanks! I will try to fit that in to the next version.

For now, enjoy a Lunar build that answers the question "What if Batman actually turned into a half-bat half-man to fight crime, instead of merely dressing up as one?". (Or, if you justifiably think that's a stupid question, feel free not to enjoy it.I tried for this one to focus on Charms in non-favored Attributes to start for XP efficiency (and to reflect the well-roundedness of the character), where I favored the Attributes that I thought might have the most Charms in a high-Essence version.

Batman

...

[habitableexoplanet]

Sure, I'm inclined to agree - I just wanted to make some softer claims that would be harder to argue against, rather than say something more bold.




I'm excited to see how your system turns out! I have a brief comment:



I think that - because Exalted is a game not mainly built around sailing - the best Sail person will want to take the lead in a naval encounter (as compensation for their character's Sail pool not being relevant in other situations). Thus I think it might make sense to set up a system where the highest Sail person uses their...

[habitableexoplanet]

Did you consider just making up some Sail antagonists by picking a dice pool and some charms? I tried to do this once but didn't end up running the fight with them. It doesn't seem nearly as complicated as designing enemies for the ordinary combat system.





I agree that this is the most important question to ask but it's probably not so relevant to answer until DrLoveMonkey runs an encounter that the PC wins, because, even if the encounter were super fun, if the heroes are defeated it's not the kind of fun you can have very often. (although...