Ask a question, get an answer 2

[Lioness]

Even if the original thread wasn't the culprit for the recent problems with the forum it's probably best we start over.

This is the general user Q&A thread. Additionally if you are not an Exalted developer and wish to weigh in on a question posed in Ask the Devs, please answer it here.

Thank you everyone.

[IanWatson]

Over 900 pages -- over 13,000 comments -- is a bit much. We're probably good to start a new thread after every 100 pages or so.

[SamuraiMujuru]

Ey! Serendipity!

Running a crazy pirate game, the Circle is wanting to train up their crew. Noticed that there is a suspicious lack of how to train up troops and such apart from specific charm effects. Did I overlook it somewhere, or is there a well received homebrew system?

[The Wizard of Oz]

I don't think there are any rules outside charms.
I would suggest maybe something like a month of training and a Charisma+War roll to give a group average drill.

[The Wizard of Oz]

Two questions:
Are there any rules for chariots anywhere? I don't think there are.
What charms do DBs have to let their mounts/mortal soldiers not take Anima Flux in 3e?

[armyofwhispers]

Two questions:
Are there any rules for chariots anywhere? I don't think there are.
What charms do DBs have to let their mounts/mortal soldiers not take Anima Flux in 3e?

No stats for chariots exist that I'm aware of.

I believe Dragon-Among-Horses Exaltation renders mounts immune by conferring a point of hardness.

[JohnDoe244]

Ey! Serendipity!

Running a crazy pirate game, the Circle is wanting to train up their crew. Noticed that there is a suspicious lack of how to train up troops and such apart from specific charm effects. Did I overlook it somewhere, or is there a well received homebrew system?

I'd look to the animal training section to get a benchmark for training times.

[webkilla]

hmm... you'd think there'd be rules for chariots. ride charms? ride rolls? but its a vehicle... does it fall under Sail?

[Epee102]

I'd put chariot as ride, with the 'steed' being the horses pulling it.
Depend on the chariot, its probably best modeled as a mount or a mount+cover

[webkilla]

mount + cover makes sense. with the chariot having some soak/HP like a simple vehicle maybe, so people can destroy it if they shoot at it right

[Zardoz]

How does Fire and Stone Strike and Hungry Tiger Technique interact?

"If used in conjunction with Fire and Stones Strike, the Exalt simply duplicates up to (Essence or three) extra successes when paying for damage dice."

You pay for damage dice before you make the roll, so there are no extra successes to double.

[Kelly Pedersen]

How does Fire and Stone Strike and Hungry Tiger Technique interact?

"If used in conjunction with Fire and Stones Strike, the Exalt simply duplicates up to (Essence or three) extra successes when paying for damage dice."

You pay for damage dice before you make the roll, so there are no extra successes to double.

I think that that line specifically refers to using Fire and Stones Strike and Hungry Tiger Technique on a decisive attack - basically, by paying the cost of Fire and Stones Strike, you get to increase the number of damage dice added to the attack by however many you buy. Since Hungry Tiger Technique lets you transfer all your successes from the attack roll to your decisive damage, the normal effect of Fire and Stones Strike on a decisive would be completely redundant, and this makes it useful again.

So, say you're Essence 1, and make a decisive attack on someone with FaSS and HTT, paying the full 6m, 2i to get the maximum effect. If the target's Defense is 4, and you roll 10 successes, you get to add 9 dice to the lethal damage: all 6 net successes, plus another 3 from FaSS. If, on the other hand, you rolled very badly and only got 5 successes, you'd still get 2 extra damage dice - 1 from the 1 net success, and then 1 added in again from FaSS.

Mind, this is simply my best guess, based on how the charms interact. It's not super-clear in the book that this is actually what's intended.

[Moss Reynholm]

Two questions:
Are there any rules for chariots anywhere? I don't think there are.
What charms do DBs have to let their mounts/mortal soldiers not take Anima Flux in 3e?

I'd put chariot as ride, with the 'steed' being the horses pulling it.
Depend on the chariot, its probably best modeled as a mount or a mount+cover

Ride is specifically called out as used for chariots on pg. 156 of the Corebook, for what it’s worth.

Other than that there’s nothing I know of. Ninegala from Adversaries has an artifact 4 flying chariot but doesn’t provide any rules for how it works.

We fudged mundane chariots almost exactly as Epee102 suggested – counted as a barded steed, multiple passengers, offering light cover, -1 ride penalty to control it if I remember right.

--

On flux, here’s a few more work arounds in addition to Dragon-Among-Horses Exaltation as flagged by armyofwhispers.

1. Indomitable Warhorse Endurance – can be used to nix decisive flux damage to your mount. At 3m 1i it’s an expensive way to do business, especially for Fire Aspects, but useful if you’re riding a mount you’ve not had a chance/the incentive to bolster with DAHE etc.

2. Deadly Essence Flashpoint – A far better solution. Useful for both protecting your mount AND your troops. So long as you fire off a (nicely boosted) decisive every three turns or less they’ll never take flux damage from you. Neither will your opponents, true, and that is a kick in the teeth if you’ve got one of the hittier animas, but it’s a charm it’d make sense for every legion officer to know. (I'm a fan. I’ve toyed with homebrew that builds off it to make flux selective, deduct opponent’s attack successes etc.)

3. Timely use of charms that shed anima – so your Dragon-Graced Weapons (fashion and chuck an elemental javelin every now and then), extended range elemental bolts and so on.

4. Grant your familiar mount magical hardness via training/Mother-of-Beasts Mastery.

5. Whispering Dragon Soul - Mute your charms, don't build anima. Gets expensive fast though.

There’s also artifact/merit solutions – Carnelian Phoenix from Arms, mounts with natural hardness – but those are the charms that leap to mind.

[Moss Reynholm]

I posted this in Ask the Devs a while back but it got missed/skipped in Vance’s latest blitz of answers (not complaining if it was skipped, mind – I asked two other pedantic and possibly glaringly obvious Qs and in Vance's position I’d definitely have decided life is too short…).

Would welcome others input on this one though, especially the ‘solution’ posed in the second part – being faced with a PC party with passive defend other plus clash charms seems like a recipe for ST headaches…

--

Defend Other 'chains' – are these even a thing?

This has come up with us as a response to this ruling flagged by limaxophobiac in the Arena thread, and the fact we’re about to have multiple characters with Flame Warden Stance in our game: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...84#post1117984

Under this scenario:

X clashes with A
B is ‘defend other’-ing A and has a counter-attack charm
C is ‘defend other’-ing B and has a counter-attack charm

What happens?

--

We figured it might be simplest if the players would just have their choice of which of B or C would intercede rather than adding another stage to the defend other process. The character who wasn’t chosen becomes irrelevant while the chosen character would parry and (potentially) counter-attack.

According to the ruling cited above, A’s clash attack with X would then be resolved – with A rolling against 0 successes if X elects to attack B (or C).

Alternatively, should C only become involved if X redirects his attack to B? Or should C not be able to intercede at all?

--

I ask partly as the previous call on clash/defend other seems to make Flame Warden Stance or, say, Empyrean Aegis (ie defend other charms that allow you to still take other actions) plus clash charms on PCs are a recipe for decisives that simply aren't going to miss – thus breaking the game a bit.

My players are theory-crafting facing off against our Big Bad, pumping Player A full of initiative with Victory-Seeking Insight, setting up a Flame Warden chain and clashing on turn 2, forcing an opponent who normally has sky-high defences to defend with just a handful of extra successes. Fight over (they won't actually do it as it won't be fun, they're not monsters, but they've identified the loophole).

I’ve wondered if a solution would be that defend other can simply prevent a clash occurring, forcing it to become a normal attack against the person who intervened?

So in the above scenario, players A and B have the choice of either allowing the clash between X and A to proceed as if there was no defend other action involved or shifting X's attack entirely to B (or C depending on how you call it on my above question), which would then be resolved as a standard atack. Then A’s attack would be resolved against X’s normal defences (or maybe this has to be Dodge to represent them flinching at the last minute while their own weapon heads in B or C's direction?).

If the clash was created by a charm, e.g. PCD, then that charm would still have to be paid for, but other clash-only charms (like Crossfire Flash) wouldn’t be able to be used and would be refunded.

But I’d bow to others’ input on that idea, may create more problems than it solves.

[Zardoz]

I’ve wondered if a solution would be that defend other can simply prevent a clash occurring, forcing it to become a normal attack against the person who intervened?

Would be how I would've gone, but goes against the dev ruling. Per early dev ruling with multiple people defend othering the same ward, or a defend other chain, only the highest parry applies. So if C is defend othering B is defend othering A, and you attack A, and C has the highest parry, C intercedes. Then you get the option to redirect etc. Since you could, theoretically, set up a arbitarily long chain I would go with whoever has the highest parry in the chain and is within close range of your target.

The 'solution' would be to taget the person not primed to clash/being defend other'd... but then you could just engineer a situation where A is ready to clash and defend othering B, who is ready to clash and defend othering A.