Exalted 3.5 [homebrew]

[notanautomaton]

I've been working off and on with various things related to attempts to create a version of Exalted that I'd be happy playing. Some of you may remember my other attempts. This one is a less ambitious attempt to merely fix 3e.
Goals: Create a fix for 3e, fixing the various bad design decisions that have made it in, replacing them with either ES’s Kerisgame hacks and/or things of my own design.
Issues with the game:

Attributes/Abilities: Attributes and Abilities haven’t been changed since 2e, resulting in bad legacy code; some Attributes are extraneous, and some Abilities are too narrow compared to other Abilities. In addition, Ability specializations aren’t standardized across Abilities; Performance is the same until you get into Charms, Survival requires different specialties, and Craft is a collection of different Abilities. On the other hand, Melee, Brawl, and others are not differentiated at all.

Base Game: Crafting is an unfun cookie clicker knock-off. Bureaucracy is basically nonexistent. Thaumaturgy was turned into X-men, rather than scientists and mystics. Range bands are a pain in the ass to keep track of. Mass Combat may need a rewrite, I’ll be testing it. Merits need to be rebalanced.

Charms: Charms are filled with filler dice-tricks rather than anything interesting.

Solutions:

Attributes/Abilities: Import Kerisgame hacks.

Base Game: Create unified Sorcerous Working/Bureaucracy/Craft system, with thaumaturgy. Range bands can be replaced with Zones. Mass Combat may need to be replaced. Rebalance Merits

Charms: Near-total rewrite. Each Ability gets 10~ base charms, then a number of Style Charms. Style charms are more specialized, and are based around a certain Style.

I'm currently looking for people to work on it with me.

[notanautomaton]

Link to the homebrew doc

[notanautomaton]

Now, I'll expand on the Attributes/Abilities/Specialties that I'm planning on using. The problem with the base Attribtes is that they're divided really weirdly. For instance, Strength and Dexterity are almost always found almost equally on the same person; gymnasts are typically swole, and football players do flips all the time. Additionally, Charisma and Manipulation are two ways of doing the same thing, and don't deserve to be separate. The new Attributes are as follows;

Physique: Useful strength, including manual dexterity, agility, and strength.
Endurance: Stamina, Endurance, and things of that nature.

Cognition: How well you think.
Reaction: How well you think under pressure, and how perceptive you are.

Persuasion: How persuasive you are.
Poise: Your force of presence, ability to remain unflustered under pressure.

Abilities are even more broken down. At the base, each Ability is meant to allow you to play a fantasy archetype all on its own, be it the scholar, the politician, the traveler, or whatever. Note that Mortals are capped at 3 in their Abilities unless they stop being normal. Abilities are as follows:

Melee: Fighting close up.
Ranged: Fighting from far away.
Command: Leading an army, or a mob, or whatever.

Presence: Talking to people, but also staying true to yourself.
Expression: Art, from singing and dancing to acting.
Survival: Surviving in the wilderness, and physical endurance.

Lore: Knowledge about the world and history, including spirits.
Occult: Knowledge about the 'hard sciences' from crafting to doing medicine .
Investigation: Figuring out 'whodunnit' and profiling people.

Athletics: Lifting, jumping, acrobatics, and dodging.
Awareness: Ability to know what's going on around you.
Subterfuge: Hiding and stealing.

Bureaucracy: Running an organization or trading.
Politics: Being a politician. Hiding your own feelings, and manipulating others.
Travel: Moving from place to place, be it on a boat, a horse, or on foot.

Tell me what you think of the new division, and I'll start writing up Styles.

[Leetsepeak]

Persuasion seems like it's too specific for a raw social attribute and would make more sense as some kind of Ability.

It also seems weird to have an Ability which describes itself as "Talking to People, but staying true to yourself" when there's no ability for talking to people and NOT "staying true to yourself" for a given value of whatever that means. Like if the intent is for a single Abilty to govern talking to people, then the notion of staying true to oneself seems wholly unnecessary, and like it would be governed by a Style anyway.

[notanautomaton]

Persuasion seems like it's too specific for a raw social attribute and would make more sense as some kind of Ability.

It also seems weird to have an Ability which describes itself as "Talking to People, but staying true to yourself" when there's no ability for talking to people and NOT "staying true to yourself" for a given value of whatever that means. Like if the intent is for a single Abilty to govern talking to people, then the notion of staying true to oneself seems wholly unnecessary, and like it would be governed by a Style anyway.

Persuasion is no more specific than Charisma and Manipulation were. It's got like all of Charisma and half of Manipulation.

And Presence basically swallowed Integrity, leaving only one other 'talking to people' skill, ie, Politics.

[notanautomaton]

Styles: Styles replace Specialties entirely, instead of merely altering them. While Abilities are meant to be incredibly broad compared to normal human, well, Ability, Styles are more focused. They are the martial arts, as well as how an individual is meant to be differentiated from others within an Ability. For instance, there could be two Occult Styles focused on Medicine, but they could be completely different. One could be Sawbones Form, a style focused on surgery, while another could be Frozen Florist Style, focused on herbalism with the plants found in the North forests. A non-exhaustive and not updated for 3e list of Styles can be found here (credit to Aleph).

Any questions? Anyone want to work on it with me?

Edit: Also, you get a bonus for each level of a Style, and you can apply a style whenever you can stunt yourself as using it.

[Leetsepeak]

It might be helpful to actually describe what politics means, then. Is it manipulating people? Is it bureaucracy? Evidently not, and yet that is what it has been when used by other systems too, so that desperately needs some clarification.

Persuasion just doesn't evoke "Attribute" I the way that a word like Charisma, Manipulation, Presence et al. do. Even "Persuasiveness" might be better (it wouldn't) because at least that denotes a quality of a person. All your other attributes at least do a halfway decent job of being that, and that really makes Persuasion stand out in a bad way.

[notanautomaton]

It might be helpful to actually describe what politics means, then. Is it manipulating people? Is it bureaucracy? Evidently not, and yet that is what it has been when used by other systems too, so that desperately needs some clarification.

Persuasion just doesn't evoke "Attribute" I the way that a word like Charisma, Manipulation, Presence et al. do. Even "Persuasiveness" might be better (it wouldn't) because at least that denotes a quality of a person. All your other attributes at least do a halfway decent job of being that, and that really makes Persuasion stand out in a bad way.

So do you think I should swap Persuasion and Presence, the names at least?

[notanautomaton]

On Martial Arts: I'm just cutting them in favor of Styles and native charmtech. Exalts can learn charms based on styles as reinterpreted through their themes, and Mortals can learn spirit charms based on Styles if they're good enough.

[putty]

I've been working off and on with various things related to attempts to create a version of Exalted that I'd be happy playing.

[Sandact6]

Did you try this in your blackjack and hookers version before?

Personally with the amount of work one can put into styles it just easier to make a Legend or Wulin or Wulin-eqse game.

[ManusDomine]

Did you try this in your blackjack and hookers version before?

Personally with the amount of work one can put into styles it just easier to make a Legend or Wulin or Wulin-eqse game.

Eight Trigram Palm Style
Practitioners of this Style learn to move in circles and are distinctive for their meditative practices conducted through walking in circles, palms towards the center. Practitioners of this Style makes use of circular movements and open palm strikes in order to both deflect and defeat the attacks of opponents. When those who walk the Eight Trigram Path go to war, they wield the deadly weapons known as deer-horn knives or crescent moon knives, that easily shear through armor as well as flesh.
1: +1 to meditate when done through circle-walking.
2: +1 Dodge pool to dodge through circular movements.
3: +1 damage when using deer-horn knives.

Took me two minutes to write.

Like, Styles are ridiculously easy to write.

[notanautomaton]

Did you try this in your blackjack and hookers version before?

It shares inspiration with my last attempt.

Personally with the amount of work one can put into styles it just easier to make a Legend or Wulin or Wulin-eqse game.

And Styles are ridiculously easy. The hardest part is figuring out what styles to do for some of the more difficult Abilities, like Politics, or Investigat

And putty I'm not sure what you mean by the gif. Are you just astounded that I don't like 3e as is, or what?

[TGUEIROS]

Maybe he is hiding from your trying too hard!

[notanautomaton]

Maybe he is hiding from your trying too hard!

There is no such thing as trying too hard.