Does anyone have experience playing EX3 without supernals?

[SpruceStripedGoose]

I thought it was Lea doing the quick start.

You're right, I'm pretty sure it was Lea writing it at one point though I haven't heard anything about it for a while outside of it moving up a step in the Monday Meeting notes. But even if Lea did the initial draft of it I think we have seen that the Devs are pretty consistent about making sure those drafts match their intentions even if it means re-writing it (DB have been completely scrapped at least once no?)

I would be really surprised if the Quick Start characters were some divergence from being exemplars of charms being used and distributed as intended, firstly because Lea is by all indications a really sharp writer who has been involved with the development of EX3 from the beginning, he has been "in" on these conversations all along. But secondly because there seems to have been a conscious effort in EX3 of avoiding the 2e issue of letting hired writers go off in wild directions, even if Lea handed in a draft that didn't match how the Devs seed the system being used, I don't think it would make it to print that way without being revised back to their intentions.

[Lioness]

I thought it was Lea doing the quick start.

[SpruceStripedGoose]

I wouldn't expect the Quick Start characters to be designed as an exemplary set of choices.

Just to be clear I dont mean exemplarly as in mechanically optimized, I mean that they hopefully will be good examples of the Dev's intent in what character creation should look like, what a good balance of choices are. If they dont do that they are kinda failing as Quick Start characters.

[The Wizard of Oz]

I am really interested to see the Quick Start characters actually. I kinda want to know what the Devs consider to be an exemplary set of choices at character gen. Its been a frustration of mine in a number of places in EX3 that there seems to be this implicit expectation that you should play the game the way the Devs want you to...except they never tell you what that way is. You see this in other places too with certain air breathing mermaids and just the general decision to go with natural/vague language in the text. I would love to have a direct line to Holden and Mörke to ask them "are we doing this right". I would look to these forums more often if it weren't for the constantly diverging answers that make me think a lot of people are feeling around in the dark just like me.

I wouldn't expect the Quick Start characters to be designed as an exemplary set of choices.

[Ren9077]

So, one thing I'm seeing is complaining about what I feel is the best part of the Supernal concept. "Niche protection."

Remember 2E's "Dawn Solution," and why that was required? There was nothing special about Dawns in combat, so Twilights ended up being a lot better. Taking away Supernals would be a move back in that direction, where the most beneficial builds don't match the ideas behind the castes. I can't speak for all of you, but I, for one, am glad to be out of those dark days.

I also find it very flavorful and useful in explaining what the castes are to my new players. A character conceived as a brilliant swordsman is a Dawn, because as the greatest warriors, they're the only ones who can have Supernal Melee or Martial Arts. The idea that someone from another caste would be defined by their Melee or Martial Arts skill is weird, because that would make them primarily a warrior, and thus, a Dawn. On the other hand, with Socialize, you've got an option. Do you see your silver-tongued character more as a spy or as a diplomat? That choice determines a lot about who your character is and why they're Exalted.

Removing Supernal Abilities and that emphasis on being defined, to some extent, by your most exceptional skill takes away a giant beacon that helped me a lot in introducing new players to the game's concepts.

[SpruceStripedGoose]

I am really interested to see the Quick Start characters actually. I kinda want to know what the Devs consider to be an exemplary set of choices at character gen. Its been a frustration of mine in a number of places in EX3 that there seems to be this implicit expectation that you should play the game the way the Devs want you to...except they never tell you what that way is. You see this in other places too with certain air breathing mermaids and just the general decision to go with natural/vague language in the text. I would love to have a direct line to Holden and Mörke to ask them "are we doing this right". I would look to these forums more often if it weren't for the constantly diverging answers that make me think a lot of people are feeling around in the dark just like me.

[AnubisXy]

Well, alright. Thank you for responses Heavy Arms.

[Irked]

Sure, but we could throw around all the numbers we want on this. The point ends up being the issue not really being Supernals, but the choice not to change advancement rates to match frequency of play/preferred speed of advancement.

It doesn't have to be one or the other - both of these things contribute. And there's been no argument that anyone prefers, in general, a faster rate of advancement - just that, given some reasonable play models, Supernal winds up being a major difference for much or all of the lifespan of a character.

OK, but that's also the choice of the players when designing their characters.

Yes. However - and I think Anubis's point is - once you make the choice, "I will/will not be a Dawn," Supernal is a substantial limiting factor on how much remaining range you have in combat. Yes, you can be a Dawn and leave all your physical Attributes at 2, or never put a second dot into a combat Ability, or choose Awareness - but if you're interested in being good at combat, for much of your character's lifespan, the single choice to go non-Dawn is a major cap.

That was one of the original points that was argued over: that Caste, and consequently the choice of Supernal, is a huge deal in 3e in some ways that it wasn't in 2e (when you could match the Dawn stat-for-stat and Charm-for-Charm, if you wanted). I'm not arguing whether that change is good or bad; I'm just arguing that it is a hugely important choice, now.

It's not actually an issue with Supernals, but an issue with the social contract of the table and building your characters to match that.

Table contract is always going to factor into everything; there are very few rules that can't be ruined by a bad table contract, or patched with a particularly good one. People could play, say, D&D 3.5 and rely on table contract to stop CoDzilla from outclassing the fighter. One could have said, "The problem isn't class imbalance - it's people not building characters to match social contract." And there would have been some truth in that - the failure of table contract would have been part of the problem.

But rules are also there to encourage play along certain lines, and they carry some responsibility for what happens when you actually do play along those lines. D&D 3.5 never warned you that its classes were wildly out of balance, and so it's also a failure of its rules that they created such divergence. Likewise, it's hard for me to see a rule that says, "YOU CAN BUY THE SHINIEST TOYS IN THIS ABILITY" and not think that it bears some responsibility for any problems that come when someone buys the shiniest toys in an ability.

[Heavy Arms]

Well, that the Supernal melee guy will only be getting up to Essence 3 Charms at character Creation instead of Essence 5.

Which means... exceedingly little. There's only one Essence 4 Melee Charm so far, and two Essence 5 Melee Charms. And they're not some radical new tier of power level either. Attack all targets in close range, upgrade that, and upgrade HGD. If you couldn't curbstomp Octavian with Melee with Essence 3 Charms... Essence 4+ isn't going to change anything. All three are good solid Charms you'd want as a Melee focused character, but the idea that they put you head and shoulders above everyone else isn't actually backed up much by the rules. And this holds true for most of the combat Abilities, because most of them have very few Essence 4+ Charms, a good number of them are upgrades, and while powerful they're no replacement for having breadth in Charms.

Charm design philosophy also changed with the edition, and the top tier Charms on the combat trees generally aren't game changers; esp. compared to the jump in capability from Essence 1 to Essence 3. Hell, given the actual Charms out so far, I have a lot of trouble seeing the reduced cap from 5 to 3 actually being what made a difference for your group compared to letting people have a combat and a non-combat Supernal. I'd wager heavily that leaving it as counting as Essence 5 while having two Supernal picks would probably have nearly identical results in actual application.

It's also very much ignoring the point I was making, which was that two Supernal selections doesn't actually ensure either mixed character focus or character focus on a given part of the game. Nothing stops you from putting both towards the same area of focus, or ensures that your selections will match the tone of your group.

Supernals encourage you to build your character around them in various ways, whether by determining your choice of Caste or determining how players feel pressured to distribute Charms or spend experience points, not to mention the issues that can arise in party balance from one player being able to (for example) solo all of the other players in combat.

I don't think you've actually made a solid case for any of these to be actual issues with Supernals in general. White room optimization also isn't the same as encouraging player decisions.

Supernals encourage you to think about a defining Ability that will get you access to higher level Charms faster. You can build your character completely around that Ability and its Charms, or not. You don't have to gun for Essence 5 Charms to get a benefit out of your Supernal; just having a few Essence 3 Charms can easily have plenty of impact, and set you up to buy the Essence 4+ stuff sooner rather than later.

The game directly tells you to look at Supernal last as your refine your concept. Sure, players will frequently go in with a Supernal in mind (but that generally means they have a refined concept in mind as well), but the order is supposed to be: concept > Caste > Caste and Favored Abilities > Supernal as you narrow down your character's focus.

And, again, one player being able to solo the other players has nothing to do with Supernals. It's an issue of overall build. If you remove Supernals, this problem doesn't go away, because it's a point-buy based system that allows you to make characters that aren't good in a given activity. As I already gave as an example, I can make five mortals, and have one be capable of easily beating the rest combined. The rules don't force you to be useful in combat (or whatever) and thus a character focused on combat/etc. can beat one or more characters that aren't.

I'm not pretending to talk for anyone other my group - which is why I've been aggravating you by being very careful to state that I'm only speaking for myself and my group and not talking as if there is some kind of "silent majority" who agrees with me.

My issue is that you mix in statements like, "There are certainly issues, mechanically, the Supernals introduce that were not issues in previous Exalted editions (where Supernals did not exist)." which is not a "my group's experience" thing, but an overt claim about the system itself. You are doing more than talking for anyone other than your group because you're going past just related your group's experiences. Conflating the two is what's frustrating

[AnubisXy]

Changing Supernal to a cap of Essence + 2, and giving people two choices don't actually "force" everyone to maintain competence in one area of the game. If I take Presence and Socialize to be a social-fu expert under that scheme, I still fall behind in combat the same as if it was RAW and I picked Presence.

Well, that the Supernal melee guy will only be getting up to Essence 3 Charms at character Creation instead of Essence 5. And by the time he hits Essence 5, you'll have access to Essence 3 Charms. So you're not going to be nearly as far behind as you would have been RAW, where he's rocking Essence 5 Charms and you're stilling using Essence 1 Charms. This means that the gap is only 2 Essence levels at character creation instead of 4.

There are certainly issues, mechanically, the Supernals introduce that were not issues in previous Exalted editions (where Supernals did not exist). Supernals encourage you to build your character around them in various ways, whether by determining your choice of Caste or determining how players feel pressured to distribute Charms or spend experience points, not to mention the issues that can arise in party balance from one player being able to (for example) solo all of the other players in combat.

I'm not pretending to talk for anyone other my group - which is why I've been aggravating you by being very careful to state that I'm only speaking for myself and my group and not talking as if there is some kind of "silent majority" who agrees with me. But my group did have certain problems with the effect that Supernals caused both in play and in character-design and this was the best way we could find for keeping the concept of Supernals in the game, not lowering their power too much and still managing to get them to better reflect the kind of Exalted games that we enjoy.

[Heavy Arms]

That's a long time to go before Supernal stops changing the balance.

Sure, but we could throw around all the numbers we want on this. The point ends up being the issue not really being Supernals, but the choice not to change advancement rates to match frequency of play/preferred speed of advancement.

... well, two to three years of one character having access to a tier of (say) combat competence, while another character doesn't, can be a pretty big deal at the table.

OK, but that's also the choice of the players when designing their characters.

If we take Charms completely out of the picture - like say a heroic mortals game - one player could make a combat maxed character and another could make a character that completely sucks in combat. With the price of Attributes alone, it will take an extremely long time for the non-combat character to catch up.

This is why I was getting into the fact that you don't have to be a Dawn to have Supernals that make you really matter in combat. If it's a heavily combat focused playstyle (or just one that focuses on people keeping roughly even in combat investment), Supernals don't get in the way by forcing everyone to be a Dawn just to keep up in combat. It's not actually an issue with Supernals, but an issue with the social contract of the table and building your characters to match that.

Changing Supernal to a cap of Essence + 2, and giving people two choices don't actually "force" everyone to maintain competence in one area of the game. If I take Presence and Socialize to be a social-fu expert under that scheme, I still fall behind in combat the same as if it was RAW and I picked Presence.

Basically, I'm not seeing anything that actually says, "Supernal RAW" is the problem with any of the issues being brought up; save the one fairly tautological issue of "A Caste Supernal and a Favored Supernal removes some of the Caste niche protection." And even that isn't an issue with Supernals directly, but an issue with Caste niche protection and wanting less of it. It really seems like almost all of this can be solved with sitting down and making sure everyone is on the same page regarding things (which for a game like Exalted needs to happen anyway) without any house rules.

[Irked]

Yes, group style is variable here. But if you play for two years, and average 45 sessions a year (so slightly less than once a week), you're going to hit Essence 4 before the first year is done, and be at Essence 5 levels soon into the second. Two years of play at this rate of play means 8 months of Essence 5 play.

Or, if you play more the "~20 sessions a year" that's been most of my experience*, Essence 4 is up to two years, and Essence 5 could be as much as three. That's a long time to go before Supernal stops changing the balance.

Many games will probably never get to high Essence, but many games probably will get there as well.

Sure, I'm not denying that. I'm saying that, even if...

All they change is speed of access.

... well, two to three years of one character having access to a tier of (say) combat competence, while another character doesn't, can be a pretty big deal at the table.

Or, depending on the table, it can not matter at all! But I don't think it's weird for someone to feel that it does.



* - Primarily through college games - so a maximum of 32 weeks out of the year, some of which are lost to holidays or schedule conflicts or etc.

[Heavy Arms]

These things aren't exactly variable any more. The default RAW is 5 flat XP per session (Solar XP is variable, but doesn't count towards Essence), and Essence is gained after spending set amounts of XP. Essence 4 takes 40 sessions. Essence 5 takes 60 sessions.

Yes, group style is variable here. But if you play for two years, and average 45 sessions a year (so slightly less than once a week), you're going to hit Essence 4 before the first year is done, and be at Essence 5 levels soon into the second. Two years of play at this rate of play means 8 months of Essence 5 play.

Many games will probably never get to high Essence, but many games probably will get there as well.

I also don't find this particular line of reasoning compelling for a simple reason: if I'm playing in a game that's probably not going to get past Essence 3? I want the RAW Supernal rules even more, because that'll be the only way Essence 4 and 5 Charms are going to get into the game soon enough to get a lot of use for players to have fun with. If I'm looking at a same that's not going to have a lot of sessions (either few over a long period of time, or frequent but over a short period of time), and I want to see higher Essence come into play (so we're not playing short to play low XP on purpose), the big issue is going to be adjusting XP rates and things like story refresh rates instead of Supernals.

[Irked]

My disconnect is mostly right here. Supernals don't change this at all. All they change is speed of access. A Supernal Melee Dawn cannot do anything with Melee than a Favored Melee Twilight can't do. They can just get to it faster.

I mean, many games - in real, practical terms - are never going to get to Essence 5. One of my current campaigns is likely to stop somewhere around the middle of E3, and that'll be after something like two-and-a-half years of play.

It may be true that, in the theoretical limit, a Supernal Melee Dawn has no added capabilities - but for much, and plausibly for all, of the time you actually play him, that's absolutely not true. And in that meantime, the combat difference between a character buying high-Essence combat tricks and a character stuck at E1 can be substantially larger than "I solo Octavian in one round, where it takes you three."

(My group has a Supernal Melee Dawn - not a particularly well-built or cheesed-out character, just a guy who has invested down through to E5 while everyone else was doing other things. He could, fairly trivially, murder the rest of the party, probably several times over. That's not going to bother everyone; I'm not sure it bothers me. But it's a real thing, and Supernal helps enable it.)

[AnubisXy]

My disconnect is mostly right here. Supernals don't change this at all. All they change is speed of access. A Supernal Melee Dawn cannot do anything with Melee than a Favored Melee Twilight can't do. They can just get to it faster.

I think the biggest disconnect here is your use of the words "sooner" and "faster." How long does it take for your players to reach Essence 4 or 5 in your games?

In my experience, it often takes anywhere from a half-year to a full year (sometimes even longer) of playing before players actually reach those high Essence levels. So players might have to wait six months to a year to do the things that they could have been doing from day 1 if they had picked that Ability up as a Supernal. In fact, if the game doesn't last that long, it's possible that the Supernal Ability Solar is using Charms that the other players never had an opportunity to acquire at all.

If your players are able to hit Essence 4 or 5 within a dozen sessions or so, then yeah, Supernal isn't a big deal and just lets you access Charms a little sooner. If, however, it takes 30-50 sessions before players hit Essence 4 or 5, then your choice of Supernal has a tremendous impact on your character because it means you don't have to wait 30-50 sessions before you can start using those high Essence Charms.

It's similar to my old World of Darkness example, where deciding to focus heavily on out-of-clan disciplines costs you quite a bit of extra experience points - that means it takes more sessions than normal to earn the experience to purchase them. A player who focused on purchasing in-clan disciplines might be able to purchase 5 dots in one within 8 or 9 sessions. The player who focuses on out-of-clan disciplines might take half again as many sessions before they can purchase those powers. Again, depending on how often you game and how much experience you get each session, that can turn into a very long period of time.

Being able to get access to your powers much faster and earlier can be a pretty big deal (it is my games) but that's because I tend to be a bit conservative in giving PC's new dots of Essence. For STs who are more liberal, then Supernal isn't a big deal (and at the most extreme end, for STs who let players start at Essence 5, Supernal is utterly pointless).