Do people still find the 2nd ed Travel Distance chart useful in 3rd ed?

[SamuraiMujuru]

In my current 3E game the Circle centers heavily around trade and exploration, and I've been actively trying to keep a much better track of time in my game so things like weather, seasons, Calibration (In all my years as an Exalted ST, I've never done anything with Calibration. I feel this is a failing on my part), and the like. As such, I've been getting a lot of mileage out of the Exalted 3E travel map and the 2E travel time calculations. When I have encounters in mind, I can figure out how long it takes the party to leave one place and get to where the encounter is, figure out how long the encounter takes, then return to the map/charts to plot the rest of the travel time.

[Eldagusto]

I said basic charms, I didn't say only excellencies. And I didn't say they would be running faster then a horse by default, but short bursts I can see you faster then a horse, and if your endurance is vastly greater then a horse, which needs to do things like sleep and can get tired in a day.

[TheCountAlucard]

I said basic charms, I didn't say only excellencies.

You specified "basic non super speed Charms," as well as specifically a matter of being able to have double a master runner's dice pool, which is accomplished with the Excellency.

Which reads a lot to me like you were advocating that a Solar could run faster than a master runner or a horse by using the Excellency and no super-speed Charms.

I'll admit, I consider "super-speed Charms" to be "those that make you faster," so, to me, a non-super-speed Charm that makes you faster is a contradiction in terms.

[DrLoveMonkey]

You specified "basic non super speed Charms," as well as specifically a matter of being able to have double a master runner's dice pool, which is accomplished with the Excellency.

Which reads a lot to me like you were advocating that a Solar could run faster than a master runner or a horse by using the Excellency and no super-speed Charms.

I'll admit, I consider "super-speed Charms" to be "those that make you faster," so, to me, a non-super-speed Charm that makes you faster is a contradiction in terms.

I'm not sure where the line gets drawn here. I seem to remember a writer or dev commenting on it but I can't remember which side they came down on. Basically do insane feats beyond all human reason require a specific charm to do, or can they be accomplished by rolling high enough on a generic roll? It doesn't help that the text is explicit in saying that inhuman feats can be accomplished by difficulty 5 rolls, see page 185. Somebody can make a difficulty 5 roll and read a passage of a text by feeling the ink with their fingertips, or leap hundreds of feat down and accurately land in a cart of hay, and walk away.

Compared to those feats running faster than an Olympic runner is positively pedestrian.

[Isator Levi]

Hmm, a lot of things seem to have been mixed up to the point where I'm not sure how relevant it is to discuss circumstances in which humans can keep up with or outrun horses.

Suffice to say that it can happen a fair amount, because horses don't gallop very often or for very long.

The way that something like a craft roll is set up, having extra dice does not affect the time increment, it just makes it more likely that you will actually hit your target. These difficulties are not something that corresponds directly to some quantitative value inside the setting; it's not a case of more dice equals more power equals task is done quicker, barring the case of extended rolls that would otherwise stack hours on top of each other.

One talks about contests, but even Usain Bolt's record beating time was only 0.2 seconds faster than the person who came in second. If you're just using an Excellency, then you're winning that contest by an increment of minutes at best.

Examples of difficulty 5 actions occasionally verge on what a Charm would do, but I would say that depends more on narrative setup and incurs greater risk of failure than you would get with a Charm that just simply increases capabilities.

And I think it's fair for a Storyteller to sometimes not set a difficulty for a task that is not possible. If you want to cover a thousand miles in an hour without magic to increase speed, you should not be given a difficulty.

There is another thing; a goal is set and a difficulty is provided for it based on narrative implications. It should not ever be a case of rolling dice, getting a number of successes, and then asking what that translates to.

[Eldagusto]

What I was meaning with the horseshoe thing was if a Solar could finish an extended action in one roll and a mortal takes 3 or 4, then you are finishing exceptionally quicker. And if the project was making a buttload of horseshoes, not one horseshoe, you can translate the successes as amount of horseshoes made in the buttload being more then the other person made in the increment, thus you are making them faster. Translating the fluff of the crunch here. You can also finnangle with the ST saying you are doing a rush job, you got to make four horseshoes to shoe the Wife of Hipparkes and cheese it before the city explodes so you are doing it half the normal time with increased difficulty/penalty. Its reasonable, its not like your taking a decade off your manse construction.


But anyways please lets not get side tracked anymore, as amusing as the inevitable Count argument in an Eldagusto thread is it can be draining and derailing.

[Isator Levi]

So for running somewhere would you roll athletics or resistance and stamina?

I wouldn't do Resistance, because I find that to be focused on pain, poison and contagion as narrative things. Running long distances may realistically include body management necessities, but I don't think they're typically the narrative focus of something like running.

What would one roll represent an hour in normal conditions or distance. Would distance be the way to go so you can represent an insane roll as great distance?

I've already said what I think, but to reiterate I think it should be a case of setting a goal and then rolling its necessary difficulty.

Barring super speed, the fact is that for crossing a long distance, the amount of time you would get by jogging or running over walking is fairly incidental.

It's all still a matter of what a given focus on action accomplishes in a game.

And a tireless lunar that goes eagle form should zoom past a normal eagle.

Well, yes, but anything will reach a greater distance when one of them just stops moving altogether. There's a rather famous story in which a particularly slow animal wins a race because of that.

It still begs the question of if a given Lunar is tireless.

EDIT: Mind, when it comes to extended rolls as contests, it's not difficult to assign a required number of cumulative successes that prevents the thing from being rendered as very silly.

[TheCountAlucard]

It rubs me the wrong way when you simultaneously try and get the last word and say, "But let's get back on-topic," Eldagusto.

But fine, I'll agree to disagree.

[Evil Aardvark]

Absent magic making them capable of such, a human just plain does not run as fast as a horse can.

Over long distances humans can go faster than horses, deer, gazelle and most other quadrupeds. That's why persistence hunting works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

[Evil Aardvark]

According to messages on this list, if we triple the scale, we get an area 8.5 times the size of the earth. Others have suggested that doesn't make sense.

If we reject that notion, then we end up with an area that is slightly smaller than the earth. But I seem to remember repeatedly hearing that Creation is much larger than earth. Am I wrong about that?

[Blaque]

According to messages on this list, if we triple the scale, we get an area 8.5 times the size of the earth. Others have suggested that doesn't make sense.

If we reject that notion, then we end up with an area that is slightly smaller than the earth. But I seem to remember repeatedly hearing that Creation is much larger than earth. Am I wrong about that?

Creation on that map right now has about 168M square miles (each square on the gird map is 500 miles square. I count 21 up and 32 accross, which gets the final result). Earth has a total about 57M miles square. Now note that Creation has a pretty sizable Western Ocean and seas, and there are things like deserts and tundra there too. So the usable land betwen Creation and Earth is debatable since the Creation map likely has a lot of things like rivers, mountain ranges and things outright missing.

A big thing is that Creaiton's landmass is pretty continguous. And since Creaiton is flat, not a sphere, the furthest one can be from two points on it is actually a ways further than on Earth. Someone in Coral and another person out at Ydanna will be further away from one-another than anyone on Earth can physically be from eachother since it won't wrap around. This creates some pretty weird distance perspectives about.

And stuff.

[TheCountAlucard]

Over long distances humans can go faster than horses, deer, gazelle and most other quadrupeds. That's why persistence hunting works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

I'm quite aware, but we're not running thirty miles an hour when persistence hunting, either.

Pursuing an animal until it drops dead is a great way to hunt an animal, but it's not a great way to get to the next town before the human professional runner bringing them your enemy's orders to have you killed for treason.

[Eldagusto]

Isator Levi, so if they fail the roll that means they go at walking speed rather then jog? With a botch being they stop to throw up?

[Isator Levi]

Isator Levi, so if they fail the roll that means they go at walking speed rather then jog? With a botch being they stop to throw up?

How I would define a failure would depend on why I have called for the roll in the first place.

I would presume in many cases that a roll for running is not necessarily about the speed, but being against a deadline, in which case a failure does not mean that you didn't run, but that you just didn't run fast enough.