The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
Please vote in the Forum Structure Poll. Polling will close at 2PM EST on January 21, 2025.
Exalted?
saerrian
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
I was wondering if anybody had tried WW's Exalted Pen and Paper Roleplay?
Or if anybody knew if the PA-Boys had done it. I mean, I imagine Jim Darkmagic in Exalted, and it becomes brilliant when you get bonuses for stunting.
What do other people think of Exalted, or other WW games?
(I am not a fanboy or something, as I also enjoy D+D 3.5 and 4th, I just prefer WW's metaplots to D+D.)
Or if anybody knew if the PA-Boys had done it. I mean, I imagine Jim Darkmagic in Exalted, and it becomes brilliant when you get bonuses for stunting.
What do other people think of Exalted, or other WW games?
(I am not a fanboy or something, as I also enjoy D+D 3.5 and 4th, I just prefer WW's metaplots to D+D.)
saerrian on
0
Posts
Rules could use some tweaking, but that can be said for most games.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
I haven't gotten to actually play it much though. :?
In a lot of ways, though, "balance" was never really a consideration.
My experience with the system however is that after a while you're beyond caring of the rules, as a Storyteller. It's very brutal for he, because Exalteds wide power base makes any planned and prepared adventures, villains, very hard to apply. For example, at the start of the campaign I had a sweet little thing going, my players trying to earn the trust of a local kingdom by helping it's people and prince. Then the Dawn Caste Solar entered his limit break, which he had "wisely" picked as Berserker Rage. He went on a rampage killing innocent civilians, which ended up with them hunted out of the country, and many carefully laid plans by them and me was ruined.
Alternately, go with "Allow Everything."
Exalted is my favorite pnp game and setting.
I mean, really, there are Sidereal martial arts charms that allow you to turn a person into a concept. i.e. "I punch you and turn you into the taste of the air on the coastline on a warm afternoon."
Everything is pretty much turned up to 11.
I guess.
No matter how much you add and crank the power level, a starting level Solar-tier Exalt is invincible until he runs out of Essence.
Now, I can definitely understand limiting thematic stuff (like I don't really like power armor and warstriders so I wouldn't generally run a game where those were important.)
Guh-WHAAAAAA?!
On the other hand, no matter how someone manages to break it, a starting character can invest 3 charms and 2 bonus points to be able to ignore it with Seven Shadow Evasion + Reflex Sidestep Technique.
Abyssals and Infernals have similar ways to just ignore bad shit.
Of course, its fanbase is the creepiest sector of people I've ever seen on the entire internet, and it really takes a good group of players to run with the setting and make it totally awesome. I've had a couple of good games of Exalted, and a few bad games of Exalted. The good ones? Very good, epic action, etc. The bad ones, miserable, slow, full of people who refuse to take the plot by the balls.
This is true, and one of the reasons I don't disregard the system entirely.
Edit: Any Exalt, anyway.
Edit 2: I did not know Exalted had a creepy fanbase and I'd like to know more.
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23
And yeah, "Balance" is not really achievable. But Fun certainly is.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
How is VBoS broken?
D&D really is the only tabletop RPG I'm aware of that has meticulously calibrated balance as a design goal.
It's also really difficult to kill anything that is Exalted, but then, that's part of the whole Every Single Exalt Is a Protagonist thing.
Eeeeeeh.
Combat in Exalted is a resource management game. The first one to run out of essence dies.
Any ST who wouldn't let a Solar start with VBoS if she wants is a dick ST. It's a Celestial Style like any other.
Having said that, I'd let a starting character take it if they were willing to take a 5 point Mentor or Sifu background. And understood that they were setting themselves up for Sidereal style getting jacked with.
Back to the OP's question-Exalted rocks, but you have to be able to go with the game's flow. For example-Ineednosalt has mentioned them, but perfect defenses really throw some people for a loop. For a very minimal expenditure of energy, which the Solar can often gain back immediately, a Solar can parry (or dodge) any attack. Literally any attack. Atomic bomb, baleful eye of the god of death, dead Cthulhu tentacle grab, whatever. That shit just got stuffed.
Obviously, that changes the nature of combat tremendously, and some people really don't like it. But Exalted (at least with Solars) is intended to work at that kind of power level.
Yep.
You're not managing your resources very well if you stick around long enough to run out of them.
Run Away is an option, and the only Exalts you're ever going to kill (assuming a pretty simple PD/Surprise Negation combo) are the ones who are too stupid to run away.
VBoS is broken because:
It gives Sidereals (or anyone else) an equivalent of a Solar's Infinite Martial Arts Mastery + First Martial Arts Mastery at Essence 2.
Joy in Adversity Stance makes the whole "resource management" thing go out of the window when you couple it with the fact that you've got an Essence 2 Sidereal with PDVs of 10+.
I fell in love with the game in early 1E, and never quite managed to fall back out again despite various issues with rules, setting and fans. It's irksome, because I know I'm not going to play the game again, but I can't stop thinking "man, X would be awesome to play in Exalted." It's become my default game, even if I don't touch it.
The "or anyone else" is the most important bit here. The scene-longs are very powerful but Sidereals get less worth out of them than Solars do due to their smaller mote pools and large commitment costs. If the style were restricted to Sidereals only (as if the entire style were Sidereal only extension charms) it would be more balanced.
If running by print I wouldn't let a Solar start with it (the book goes out of its way to list reasons why no one but Sidereals learns it in this day and age), but in my own setting it's hflat-out Sidereals only.
A Solar meleeist can beat that fairly consistently, and against a truly deadly foe the Sidereal is taking her life in her hands every time she doesn't perfect/Impede such an attack. Besides for consistently high defences you want to go dodge anyway, for Defence of Shining Joy. A Sidereal relying soley on Blade of the Battle Maiden for a high defence can get mobbed by extras.
But really, I've never found Exalted any worse than 3.5e D&D balance wise. If you have players who set out to break the game, they will probably break it. Other than that you can generally fix things at a fairly low level by tweaking a few charms and reducing the power of Grand Weapons a little if they prove problematic. The only real gripe I have is that at high levels combat starts to become a case of "I attack for massive damage every timer" vs "I perfect defend every time", but fewer games than you'd think actually reach that point before their natural conclusion. It can involve quite a bit of work for the GM however, if you're the type who doesn't take shortcuts or make stuff up when building NPCs.
My main love for Exalted though is in the setting. It's kitchen sink without most of the flaws. It deconstructs classic myths of heroism while being a great setting to emulate them. It manages to combine eastern and western sources without relying too much on either (there's a common perception that Exalted is an anime game, but it casts its net far wider than that). Plus it has a really detailed cosmology/metaphysics that generally make sense if you like crazy stuff. (How the Wyld works is particularly awesome, as are the stoylines and mechanics of the Yozis, the demon princes of exalted)
And remember, Essence 2. If you're not a Martial Artist with VBoS, you don't get a scene-long +10 dice to attack for free yet like this Martial Artist does.
And since he's a Solar, he can take Adamant Skin Technique, so he knows whether an attack would hit him before he has to invoke his perfect defense.
VBoS style, with Blade of the Battle Maiden + Joy in Adversity Stance, is basically one of the handful of ways to make a character who doesn't ever lose the mote attrition race. (It's less of a problem later on, but a Celestial Martial Art that gives Lunars and Dragonbloods (I think -- I don't recall what Essence they need to learn CMA) at Essence 2 the equivalent of Essence 3 Solar Excellencies shouldn't happen.)
For example, I'm not big on the 'ten easy steps' of resolving one player's turn.
I love the hell out of the setting and the feel of the game, but the mechanics turn me off a bit.
SoogaGames Blog
There are very, very few games that even begin to approach the power level of Exalted.
ITS OVER NINE THOUSAND!
there aren't other fantasy games that do what exalted does