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[Lioness]

To wound penalties. In the initial post you seemed at least partially motivated by the idea that Exalted isn't supposed to be gritty especially with talk of wound advantages.
The Night Caste are often kind of gritty, embodying expertise in activiities that are at odds with how a lot of people view the setting, so it's useful to figure out where you stand with that.


Okay, good luck with your project....

[Lioness]

The solution to passive agressiveness isn't overt aggression with a little wink to make it look playful. You're not being infracted for this but it can't keep happening....

[Lioness]

If wound penalties are no longer part of the system then this isn't the ability of the Exalted to push through pain, it's the system making no distinction between unwounded and dying, it'd be down to the Storyteller to have Mortal NPCs react realistically to injury to create this distinction.

[Lioness]

I've still not got a good idea for translating the attack profile into an enviromental hazard beyond "eyeball it and hope for the best" but I'm hoping to test in soon.

[Lioness]

Okay, your previous post suggested a greater antipathy to them. I also wanted to highlight that as one of the 5 Solar Castes, and thus part of the "core" game experience, the Night Caste were a very prominent subversion to the idea of Exalted as a game of epic escalating kung fu battles....

[Lioness]

Wound penalties are useful because of the Night Caste approach.

Having people act like they're stabbed makes the assassination set-up worthwhile even if they don't automatically go down, if literally everyone responded to a gaping stab wound with the Terminator's indifference to injury or by slipping into Laughing Wound Form with an ecstatic groan and a cry of "IS THAT A KNIFE IN MY BACK? OR ARE YOU JUST PLEASED TO SEE ME!?" you'd likely start to wonder why you were even bothering....

[Lioness]

It's nice to see that target goal get smashed like this.

[Lioness]

The main thing I'm starting to consider for house rules is some tweaks to battle groups.

The area attack is potentially a bit of a problem. There's often not much variation in defence values so the attack tends to either flounder ineffectually like what a lot of people seem to experience or roll really well and be capable of putting the entire circle on the backfoot (barring the use of charms that can be activated after the roll has already taken place).

I think my preference would be to borrow from the rules for Environmental Hazards because in practice I've found that...

[Lioness]

I don't know much about Link and literally nothing about his sword, but assumed that LoveMonkey was posting in good faith when bringing him up in the same context as Elric and Arthas whose stories and relationships to their weapons I'm very much aware of.

[Lioness]

I don't think that's a good comparison. Due to being a deconstruction of the big man theory coupled with how the default PC is immediately promoted to a significant positions of power, Exalted discourse has historically been contemptuous of its major NPCs. There is no Elric, Arthas or Link in Creation- just a PC shaped void....

[Lioness]

This is tricky because the concept for the armour is the sort of thing that, to me a least lends itself to making 'basic' NPC antagonist equipment a little more interesting.

Immovable Mountain (Attune):
The mythic weight of Immovable Mountain works against those who would seek to push its bearer back.
Attacks and effects that would force the wearer to move one or more range bands (such as Smashing Attacks) suffer a penalty to the roll equal to the armour's mobility penalty.

As you can see it's quick and pretty simple with a visual component to it. I'd probably

...

[Lioness]

I'm not keen on the execution, but I prefer it to Immortal Malevolence Enslavement and Final Ray of Light from last edition because most PC deaths I've seen were the result of the Storyteller either getting sloppy or overly agressive with encounter design....

[Lioness]

The fact the game started in early 2008 means the occam's razor answer of "someone with an unsettled grudge against him" isn't particularly helpful.

[Lioness]

More that the 2e Neverborn are ultimately another group of irrational tyrants who care more about making everyone else suffer than acheving their stated goal....

[Lioness]

In 2nd edition it was intentional that your Loyalist Deathknight could very easily gain Resonance for Sins of Life that were commited in the line of duty rather than a punishment for roleplaying an Abyssal wrong....

[Lioness]

Well, most of the game thus far has taken place in Y'danna which is a complete blank slate. But even those other places aren't burdened by years of questionable canon which can make the locations feel a lot smaller by reducing them to singular obvious hooks....

[Lioness]

I'm really enjoying the blank canvas currently provided by the Dreaming Sea. Only one of the games I'm in takes place there but that has a way of being the "leave your expectations at the door" locale.

[Lioness]

Yeah, that along with needing a context for a Lore roll was considered a key part of 3rd edition moving away from the "play as the Exaltation, not the host" mentality....

[Lioness]

Can we express ourselves without that word, please?...

[Lioness]

Been quiet here for a while.
Convergence was a fun story for me, in which a cult accidently established contact with a being of almost unfathomable scope and turned their tower manse base of operations into a place of body horror that seemed to be alive. The twist was that much of the tone of this arc was a love letter to the movie Annihilation and the Southern Reach Trilogy in general.

That being that the enemy wasn't a Yozi or similarly malicious being but the remnant of a mostly destroyed world that was attempting to be whole, but with no animus of its own all it was doing was reflecting.

...