Long-time Player, New to Exalted 3rd Edition

[Sandact6]

I had the same issues with the system, to the point where I had to rewrite the entity of the Solar charmset from the ground up. Just know you're not alone.

[Xerxes]

OK. I don't personally use the unofficial stuff because if it was actually important, someone on the dev team surely would have made an actual errata pdf in the last 7ish years Exalted has been out.

You'd think that, but there has been a consistent anti-errata stance across 3rd edition so far. There has been speculation that this is because Onyx Path don't want to devalue deluxe editions (I've seen this spoken, but never seen it properly sourced, so can't speak as to its truth), but we do have this Discord post made by Eric Minton on the subject in 2020, explaining the stance from another angle:

Doing proper errata (rather than just giving off-the-cuff recommendations as we currently do) takes a lot of time and energy that would have to be taken away from other work. It would basically be an entire additional book of solid mechanics, which would pretty much bottleneck Vance from developing additional splatbooks for the duration. And either Onyx Path would have to charge for it, which everyone would hate, or they'd have to budget for us to do a book for free, which isn't feasible on the industry's shoestring budgets. And of course it couldn't be printed, because it would need to be updated every time a new book came out or every time someone spotted an inconsistency in an older book that had slipped past folks.

The old 2e errata was basically a fan project by the old devs. We simply cannot do that on top of our current workloads.

Given that position, I think it's unlikely that we'll get an official errata of any kind for Ex3. Crucible of Legends will have additional rules that can be used, but will not overhaul existing systems.

[HighPriest]

Edit: Double Post

[HighPriest]

Vance clarified it in the "unofficial dev errata" thread.

OK. I don't personally use the unofficial stuff because if it was actually important, someone on the dev team surely would have made an actual errata pdf in the last 7ish years Exalted has been out.

Do you think that's too powerful?

It's strong, but considering how Iron Whirlwind Attack already splits up your initiative into very small pools, I don't think doubling any that succeed is too strong. For what it costs, Fire and Stones potentially quadrupling your initiative pool by transferring successes into the raw damage pools might actually be more effective.

The weird part about Thunderbolt would be if you get the extra movement between each attack, which I don't think you should - you're consuming your reflexive movement in the first action, and Iron Whirlwind only gives free cost to attack enhancing Charms, not to movement Charms. But it's such a weird interaction that the whole thing needs to come down to "GMs Call".

That was my initial reading of it but then I remembered it didn't actually say it did magnitude damage to groups so I edited my post to say initiative 'damage' to battle groups. I think charms like Searing Quicksilver Flight SHOULD take away initiative to battle groups. My reading is that their 'inert initiative' is solely mentioned for their withering attack damage, not that they can't have it altered by any means. Therefore, I thought that this charm might be useful in lowering their initiative and therefore making them 'scattered' by making them go later in the round. Scattered could and should probably mean magnitude damage though.

If you're using the unofficial dev errata stuff, nothing can change battle group initiative unless it specifically says that it changes battle group initiative EXCEPT that they can voluntarily pay for gambits with initiative costs. I believe Searing Quicksilver is actually the specific Charm that was called out as NOT affecting battle group initiative.

[Tyzerg]

1. As far as I know, it wasn't errata'd out. The Decisive-only tag is still present, and I don't see anything about withering ambush attacks being an exception to the tag in the text of the Charm. Decisive attacks only.

Vance clarified it in the "unofficial dev errata" thread.

2. I would say that Thunderbolt Attack Prana is an "attack-enhancing Charm", so only pay for it once.

Do you think that's too powerful?

3. I tend to agree that Shower of Deadly Blades is pretty weak for the cost. It's also poorly written - not given any consideration for Artifact throwing weapons, not giving any actual thought toward how it would interact with battle groups despite the fluff text indicating that's a big part of its purpose.

Agreed

Two things you have wrong - first, it will scale from 1 to 5 initiative, based mostly on Essence. That can be a significant amount coming from a high Essence character, who could theoretically drop a cluster of foes into initiative crash. Whether the crash bonus would be awarded to the Solar is less clear-cut, though I'd argue that the intent of the charm seems to lean toward no.

I was just going off the base level of the power as it's prereq is Essence 2. Even at Essence 5, though, it seems pretty meh. I think the intent was also no. "Indirectly crashing" opponents is a storyteller determined issue RAW but I think it should apply to dodge charms that steal initiative and maybe this charm as well.

Second, it wouldn't drop the battle group's initiative, as battle groups have inert initiative. I would argue that a battle group should take some amount of magnitude damage instead, but it doesn't have any actual rules included for how much and the normal rules uses pre-rolled initiative dice. Personally, I would say it does magnitude equal to initiative it would deal to a normal character, so 1-5. Half that rounded up would be a more conservative conversion. I would also say that if it prompted a rout check, it would include the +1 difficulty modifier as a supernatural area-of-affect attack.

That was my initial reading of it but then I remembered it didn't actually say it did magnitude damage to groups so I edited my post to say initiative 'damage' to battle groups. I think charms like Searing Quicksilver Flight SHOULD take away initiative to battle groups. My reading is that their 'inert initiative' is solely mentioned for their withering attack damage, not that they can't have it altered by any means. Therefore, I thought that this charm might be useful in lowering their initiative and therefore making them 'scattered' by making them go later in the round. Scattered could and should probably mean magnitude damage though.

I'm not going to address the ammunition checks, as I don't like those rules at all - they just serve to serve as an annoyance to ranged combat characters, who then get to have the "fun" of sitting out for a combat for a round or two doing trivial scavenging rolls.

I still don't think that it's great for the cost, especially at low Essence, unless I'm also missing some sort of point.

Agreed.

You may or may not also try reading This Thread, in which people were talking about area of effect attacks and battle groups in general for a wider range of opinions on the topic. Unfortunately it breaks down pretty quickly, as the rules aren't great on the topic.

Okay, I'll check it out, thank you!

[HighPriest]

Hi Guys,

I see this thread has taken on a new direction, which is fine but I'd like to ask a couple of questions:

First, it would seem that some of the balancing points to HGD was that it was Decisive-only but it would appear that that was errata'd out, at least the unexpected part of it. Do you think that is a good errata or did you think the limiting factor of only being able to block unexpected attacks if they are decisive is a good balance to dodge charms?

Second, my player wants to know if he has to pay for Thunderbolt Attack Prana comboed with Iron Whirlwind Attack for each attack or is it just paid for once like Hungry Tiger Technique?

Third, can someone explain to me why Shower of Deadly Blades costs 6m, 1wp. It seems EXTREMELY underpowered for the cost and requirements. Am I just reading it incorrectly? How can 2 initiative per target that isn't the original target be worth all that? How does it "scatter" groups when the most it can do to a battle group is drop it by 2 initiative? Why does it warrant an ammunition check? All these downsides for 2 initiative that the Solar doesn't receive. Am I missing the point?

1. As far as I know, it wasn't errata'd out. The Decisive-only tag is still present, and I don't see anything about withering ambush attacks being an exception to the tag in the text of the Charm. Decisive attacks only.

2. I would say that Thunderbolt Attack Prana is an "attack-enhancing Charm", so only pay for it once.

3. I tend to agree that Shower of Deadly Blades is pretty weak for the cost. It's also poorly written - not given any consideration for Artifact throwing weapons, not giving any actual thought toward how it would interact with battle groups despite the fluff text indicating that's a big part of its purpose.

Two things you have wrong - first, it will scale from 1 to 5 initiative, based mostly on Essence. That can be a significant amount coming from a high Essence character, who could theoretically drop a cluster of foes into initiative crash. Whether the crash bonus would be awarded to the Solar is less clear-cut, though I'd argue that the intent of the charm seems to lean toward no.

Second, it wouldn't drop the battle group's initiative, as battle groups have inert initiative. I would argue that a battle group should take some amount of magnitude damage instead, but it doesn't have any actual rules included for how much and the normal rules uses pre-rolled initiative dice. Personally, I would say it does magnitude equal to initiative it would deal to a normal character, so 1-5. Half that rounded up would be a more conservative conversion. I would also say that if it prompted a rout check, it would include the +1 difficulty modifier as a supernatural area-of-affect attack.

I suppose it could also be used to apply some Supplemental Thrown effects on a group of clustered enemies, but at a cursory glance I'm not seeing a lot of withering supplemental thrown charms that would apply well here.

I'm not going to address the ammunition checks, as I don't like those rules at all - they just serve to serve as an annoyance to ranged combat characters, who then get to have the "fun" of sitting out for a combat for a round or two doing trivial scavenging rolls.

I still don't think that it's great for the cost, especially at low Essence, unless I'm also missing some sort of point.

You may or may not also try reading This Thread, in which people were talking about area of effect attacks and battle groups in general for a wider range of opinions on the topic. Unfortunately it breaks down pretty quickly, as the rules aren't great on the topic.

[Tyzerg]

Hi Guys,

I see this thread has taken on a new direction, which is fine but I'd like to ask a couple of questions:

First, it would seem that some of the balancing points to HGD was that it was Decisive-only but it would appear that that was errata'd out, at least the unexpected part of it. Do you think that is a good errata or did you think the limiting factor of only being able to block unexpected attacks if they are decisive is a good balance to dodge charms?

Second, my player wants to know if he has to pay for Thunderbolt Attack Prana comboed with Iron Whirlwind Attack for each attack or is it just paid for once like Hungry Tiger Technique?

Third, can someone explain to me why Shower of Deadly Blades costs 6m, 1wp. It seems EXTREMELY underpowered for the cost and requirements. Am I just reading it incorrectly? How can 2 initiative per target that isn't the original target be worth all that? How does it "scatter" groups when the most it can do to a battle group is drop it by 2 initiative? Why does it warrant an ammunition check? All these downsides for 2 initiative that the Solar doesn't receive. Am I missing the point?

[Lioness]

I think a detailed fix to the Solar charmset would benefit from seeing Abyssals and/or Infernals.

[JohnDoe244]

I mean personally, I'd much rather see Abyssals finally get printed rather than have them be put off for another year or two because the authors went back to do rewrites of older Charmsets.

You'd really rather have playable Abyssals than playable Solars?

[Heavy Arms]

The problem is that the industry standard of issuing errata looks a lot more like Scion 2e's one (aka a few pages with of single line corrections that only covers very specific mistakes and doesn't get into large in-depth changes) not "redo the whole Solar Charm set for free."

All those free errata that are "industry standard" are just as unsatisfactory to most of those games' fans as Onyx Path's "we get what we get during the backer edit/feedback cycle," because like Scion 2e's one, they're generally never going to cover a lot of things that actually require thought and deliberation from the designers over spelling errors/word swaps/stat block fixes/etc.

Paizo once had four such errata for the same book (though it should be noted each was released before a new print edition was being released, so it was basically just a free change-log for fixes in the new print run), and still ended up with a very substantial FAQ thread on their forums for all the stuff those little corrections didn't cover The "everyone else does free errata" looks way more like what Onyx Path does in end result than it looks like what Exalted 2e got.

[HighPriest]

Scion 2e got a free errata doc.. but Onyx Path owns Scion completely.

Scion is a bad example for this because there wouldn't be an errata doc for it either if the wrong file hadn't been sent to print. If it hadn't been glaringly obvious that the final printed product backers got was a near-completion draft, it wouldn't exist.

Even then, the product still has significant issues that could be easily addressed by another update of the errata doc. It's definitely a case of Onyx Path doing the absolute minimum in an attempt to placate backers, not an example of them making good on supporting a product.

Onyx Path generally doesn't do errata or other post-release support. That's pretty obviously their policy. I don't think Paradox is doing a great job as the IP holder of most of the old White Wolf stuff, but they aren't the source of the current policy of neglecting the widespread industry standard of basic errata documents. Frankly, I don't think Paradox cares enough to bother declaring "No errata!"

[Blaque]

Wasn't the Scroll of Errata in 2nd edition free?

It was also something writers have noted was thousands of words, and something they put a lot of time in. It was volunteer work. Hell, laying it out was volunteer work also. It was mostly a fan effort that was allowed since it was free. The same authors have since noted that it was a lot of time and man hours on something they didn't get paid for.

There's also a good chunk of htings that weren't free, like the updated Dreams of the First Age, which was basically a new PDF/PoD purchase.

Some of the other publishers kind of are also not quite teh same thing. Sine Nomine was mentioend but that's literally one person, doing most all the work and more or less not contracting anyone. Versus a company which seems to not want to have authors do work for free.

[Tikor]

On the other hand, a lot of people would not and would in fact be pretty mad if they were asked to pay for the privilege of receiving errata on a charm set that isn't up to snuff with the quality the rest of the line has. Why should Paradox/Onyx Path get our money twice for fixing a mistake they made in the original product? I'm not going to double dip and pay them twice for the same product, I am not made of money and able to just throw wads of cash away on my entertainment products.

Wasn't the Scroll of Errata in 2nd edition free?

[AnubisXy]

2nd edition ended up getting extensive errata to the various Charmsets, but that was only after all of the splats were done being printed. In general it's simply going to be viewed as a better business decision to write new material for people to use, than to revamp old material for free. I mean personally, I'd much rather see Abyssals finally get printed rather than have them be put off for another year or two because the authors went back to do rewrites of older Charmsets.

[Heavy Arms]

The owners of Exalted are worth $2 billion. Billion. With a "b".

There's your problem.

Paradox does not give a shit. They're not giving Onyx Path a cent to help make Exalted better. Exalted exists to generate passive income for Paradox to make the big red hole in their ledgers look less bad as they've failed to capitalize on their purchase of some of the old WW IPs.

If Paradox thought Exalted was going to cost them more money (even if less than what Onyx Path pays them to make books anyway), they'd just do what they're doing to Chronicles of Darkness and stop approving books to let it die. Even if it would be a smart investment that would make them even more money in the long run. Killing the CofD is costing them money since they can't get licensing fees for books that don't exist.

Scion 2e got a free errata doc.. but Onyx Path owns Scion completely.

Onyx Path is an outlier because their position is an outlier. Pretty much every example you're pointing to are companies that own the IPs they're working on, or haven't had their licensing partner just stop refusing to let them make books that were profitable for both sides because those books aren't the IP owner's pet favorite.