Does anyone have experience playing EX3 without supernals?

[SpruceStripedGoose]

I have been sorely tempted to start an EX3 campaign from essence 1 without the supernal bonuses. I really miss that sense of progression you get in most rpg's as you come into your power. To me the mechanical temptation to go right to the end of your supernal tree and be strictly optimal in what you do best really stamps out growth, you can pick up charms to be broader but never better.

Has anybody tried this? How did limiting access to e1 charms only for the early sessions of you campaign effect it's success?

I also have some concerns about how to implement this houserule. Do you think I would need to change the ammounts of xp at which the PC's essence goes up to compensate for the lower start? Is the effort going to be completely washed out at e2 where many of the most potent charms reside?

[AnubisXy]

My group decided they didn't like Supernals as written. Instead we changed it so that Solars have two Supernals, one Caste, one Favored, but your Permanent Essence is only treated as 2 points higher (to a maximum of 5). So a starting player could purchasing up to Essence 3 Charms in a Supernal Ability at character creation, Essence 4 Charms once their Permanent Essence reached level 2, and Essence 5 Charms after achieving Essence 3.

It still allows players better access to Charms than they would normally get, but also gives a bit more sense of progression as your Essence increases, plus there's a bit less worry about trying to balance the game for characters with different Supernals (you don't have to worry as much about your Melee Supernal player solo'ing Octavian while the rest of the group watches). Plus, with 2 Supernals and a lower "maximum" on Charms you can buy, it pushes players to diversify their Charm selection a bit more.

[Blackwell]

I agree with AnubisXy, I would bring down the ceiling (even just to Essence +1) before eliminating them entirely. I don't know that two Abilities is necessary, but I like the idea.

[Lioness]

It could be worth cutting Supernal if your game has a relatively narrow focus that has no room for niche protection like intrigue at court or a martial arts tournament.

[PraxisCat]

We were having some table balance trouble with my supernal melee dawn, so for the time being he has no supernal. He's managed to keep up and contribute. I don't think you need to adjust XP or anything. In fact, not having supernals let you tell solar stories that are at a much lower level and a more human level up front because your gal who is good at talking doesn't necessarily have hypnotic tongue technique or 600 charms which destroy which ever system they're invested in.

[SpruceStripedGoose]

We were having some table balance trouble with my supernal melee dawn, so for the time being he has no supernal. He's managed to keep up and contribute. I don't think you need to adjust XP or anything. In fact, not having supernals let you tell solar stories that are at a much lower level and a more human level up front because your gal who is good at talking doesn't necessarily have hypnotic tongue technique or 600 charms which destroy which ever system they're invested in.

This is exactly the problem I am having, where the only thing that threatens dawns are other dawns and spirits 4 or 5 essence levels higher. And the captain of the ship is never going to be challenged on the seas, and the thief is simply never ever going to be seen. These are all valid states for solars to reach, but they are far too absolute for essence 1.

[SpruceStripedGoose]

I agree with Guest, I would bring down the ceiling (even just to Essence +1) before eliminating them entirely. I don't know that two Abilities is necessary, but I like the idea.

My one concern with that is that many of the charms that bend the system over their knee are right there at e2, so having them available from e1 wouldn't change much.

[Elfive]

So no supernal means the players get to crack the setting in half a bit into the game instead of right at the start. In the long run, what's the difference?

[DrLoveMonkey]

So no supernal means the players get to crack the setting in half a bit into the game instead of right at the start. In the long run, what's the difference?

I think the delay and the fact that it's the same in the long run is exactly the point. You get to play your Solar Cloud Strife as somebody who is a member of a terrorist group, then evolves into somebody who battle horrific abominations of science, to somebody who can cut apart a super mako soldier who's been infused with a shard of a great calamity that fell from the infinite dark.

Now that I'm a PC I'm also finding this, in my characters chosen field he's kind of as good now as he's always been, he's just gotten better in other areas.

The problem I see though is some kind of weak but very cool charms are locked away behind essence and it'd be nice to have those from the start.

[Hark]

I find that players rarely go all in to Supernal at Char-gen. Those that do tend to become highly focused and limited in what they can do. A more well rounded character tends to work out much better.

If you limited Supernal at character creation to say e2 charms and then afterwards opneed it up to xp growth I think you'd find characters see a solid sense of growth without it being overwhelming.

[SpruceStripedGoose]

I find that players rarely go all in to Supernal at Char-gen. Those that do tend to become highly focused and limited in what they can do. A more well rounded character tends to work out much better.

If you limited Supernal at character creation to say e2 charms and then afterwards opneed it up to xp growth I think you'd find characters see a solid sense of growth without it being overwhelming.

In our group Supernals have been heavily used, I think it really depends on the makeup of your players. Only a couple of us have tried to go broad, and personally I found that whatever I gained in broad utility was thoroughly eclipsed by the potecy of other characters and their supernals.

[Leetsepeak]

I really think the best way to approach it is to go initially broad and just utilize the Supernal to pick up the higher stuff at your own pace rather than one dictated by Essence. I know the temptation is to race to the top, but it's more rewarding I think to not shoot for the Essence 5 Charms and instead keep them in mind for the growth arc of a character.

I get how one can't really dictate that to people unless they're on board with it, but it's been the thing that made me enjoy character building more, particularly after I escaped the mindset of feeling obligated to race to the top.

[SpruceStripedGoose]

I really think the best way to approach it is to go initially broad and just utilize the Supernal to pick up the higher stuff at your own pace rather than one dictated by Essence. I know the temptation is to race to the top, but it's more rewarding I think to not shoot for the Essence 5 Charms and instead keep them in mind for the growth arc of a character.

I get how one can't really dictate that to people unless they're on board with it, but it's been the thing that made me enjoy character building more, particularly after I escaped the mindset of feeling obligated to race to the top.

I completely agree with you, to me it is a more rewarding pace of play. But I think everybody needs to be on board with that mentality or else you won't see the narrative positives because you will be so focused on other people wildly outpacing you.

[ParanoiaCombo]

This reminds me of the "optimize at things you don't want to deal with/deal with trivially" discussion we had here a little while ago. Now personally, I like Supernals, but they don't come with a much needed warning label for the ST's and the PC's as to what happens if you build tall at the exclusion of wide.

The way I see it is there are generally two brands of ST approaching this problem. Some ST's tend to have no problem fixing this with spotlight changes. Oh you have supernal Melee and make combat trivial? Not gonna see a lot of combats because people wise up to that and reputations are gained. The world reacts. Other ST's see it as a problem because they feel choices should be equitable from the perspective of the game because you are allowed to make them, and their solutions tend to be mechanical in nature. Let me just say EX3 doesn't play well with the latter solution. In a lot of ways, despite the high granular crunch, the game itself feels a hell of a lot more similar to AD&D 2E, itself a mass of rules and tangled messes which ultimately falls back on social conventions and the arbitration of the refere- err ST. The game explicitly does not set out to fix meta-problems at the table, and tbh I think if there weren't a number of editing passes, this would have been made more explicit in the text itself rather than garnering it by talking to the people who wrote it over months of message board conversations. Yes, I know, the book was big enough... grumble.

If you cannot re-enforce the conditions of the game socially or in a meta-sense through the players for some reason, mechanically changing Supernal to be Essence +1 is hardly a game breaker. Don't try to mechanically incentivize what can easily be accomplished by simple clear agreement. That's my takeaway.

As an aside, I think the biggest misunderstanding about Supernals that isn't spelled out (besides the above problem) is why Supernals are Caste-only, but that's another thread.

[DrLoveMonkey]

This reminds me of the "optimize at things you don't want to deal with/deal with trivially" discussion we had here a little while ago. Now personally, I like Supernals, but they don't come with a much needed warning label for the ST's and the PC's as to what happens if you build tall at the exclusion of wide.

The way I see it is there are generally two brands of ST approaching this problem. Some ST's tend to have no problem fixing this with spotlight changes. Oh you have supernal Melee and make combat trivial? Not gonna see a lot of combats because people wise up to that and reputations are gained. The world reacts. Other ST's see it as a problem because they feel choices should be equitable from the perspective of the game because you are allowed to make them, and their solutions tend to be mechanical in nature. Let me just say EX3 doesn't play well with the latter solution. In a lot of ways, despite the high granular crunch, the game itself feels a hell of a lot more similar to AD&D 2E, itself a mass of rules and tangled messes which ultimately falls back on social conventions and the arbitration of the refere- err ST. The game explicitly does not set out to fix meta-problems at the table, and tbh I think if there weren't a number of editing passes, this would have been made more explicit in the text itself rather than garnering it by talking to the people who wrote it over months of message board conversations. Yes, I know, the book was big enough... grumble.

If you cannot re-enforce the conditions of the game socially or in a meta-sense through the players for some reason, mechanically changing Supernal to be Essence +1 is hardly a game breaker. Don't try to mechanically incentivize what can easily be accomplished by simple clear agreement. That's my takeaway.

As an aside, I think the biggest misunderstanding about Supernals that isn't spelled out (besides the above problem) is why Supernals are Caste-only, but that's another thread.

Well everyone agreeing to limit it to essence +1 is exactly a social contract, it's just a better defined one than "let's all not just make our respective skills trivial."

I'm of a third mind of it though. I feel like investing a solid amount of charms into melee shouldn't make combat trivial. I mean in skyrim I don't put all my perks into two handed so that I can sneak around with a one handed dagger and stealth attack. I've got a bunch of fun charms and I didn't take them so that people would never put me in a position to use them.

And likewise as an ST when one of my players can shoot laser beams from their eyes I want to give them some chances to use that, because it's awesome!

But it would also be nice to have a progression like:

I can slay five blood apes => I can slay a hundred elite soldiers lead by a Dragonblood => I can slay five prepared Dragonblooded. And not just for me, I think it's really cool when a campaign builds like that. Instead what I find happens is that the lower key beginning of a campaign is just a snore fest, and then it ramps up to the ridiculous conclusion that can offer fun scenarios.

The problem is that supernals also let you access cool character defining charms as well as really powerful ones so it kind of sucks to just ditch supernals.