Revision as of 07:24, 19 April 2007

Herein follows my own personal attempt at making a combat resolution system that I'm happy with, keeping the streamlining of 2nd edition and the action-simplicity of 1st edition, hopefully without invalidating too many charms.

It is not an attempt to make the exalted book worthless, nor an attempt to usurp copyright from WhiteWolf, or any other such thing. It is changing the game to fit me and my players, as suggested in the book, and released to anyone else who wants to use it. Since most of the charms will not be majorly changed, and the setting is untouched, you will still require an exalted book. It is a new system, but it is not a new or derivative game.

-- Darloth

Contents

/Mechanics - here is all of the crunchy new rulesy stuff, such as how you hit someone and what they can do about it, etc etc.

/WeaponTable - since I've removed the speed stat and made several fairly large changes to the way weapons work, I also took the time to rebalance all of the weapons, so that they are more appropriate for this new system. Armour is also here

/CharmChanges - several charms needed to be changed to fit the system anyway, but this section also contains houserules that I think make the canon charms more worthwhile or better balanced.

/Miscellaneous - for the rest. Changed material bonuses on jade Hearthstone Bracers is an example.

/Reasoning - why I did this, and what I'm aiming for with it.

Notes / Future changes or expansions:

With the new splats out, the modified onslaught is now too powerful for anyone except solars to have a hope of coping with. It needs to be toned down.

This system in general is done so that turns are quicker and simpler - charmslots aren't mysteriously quicker if you pick up a shortsword, people only have to remember one number, things like that. However, it could be changed.

We could put speed back in, and disassociate charms from weaponspeed. Charms would need their own speed, either separate as a statistic of each charm, or based on essence used, or something. Even more work, need a new set of weaponstats, new charmstats (or hopefully a rule for working that out) and maybe new mechanical things to cope with that.

A third possibility is Wordman's suggestion that weaponspeeds are very low (easily getting to 1 or 2 with magic) but acting still incurs a DV penalty and there are no flurries, plus you must take an action (fairly slow, perhaps slower if you've attacked/acted lots) to reset DVs and gain another charmslot. See Trithne/TickHack.

• Perhaps make flurries inflict a dv penalty equal to the largest DV penalty in the flurry... or at least make flurried attacks cause only -1 DV loss. This would go a long way towards removing the harsh penalties for flurrying and makes flurries a generally improved strategy. I like that personally. If you're a skilled exalted swordsperson and you have a fast sword, shouldn't you get to attack more with it?

• Onslaught based on incoming number of attacks, whether they are successful or not, means that mortals are very powerful against exalts. Onslaught never carrying over means that without coordinated attacks, an infinite number of mortal archers can bombard an exalt (or skilled heroic mortal!) for no effect. According to the fluff, that isn't desirable either (I believe it specifically states that enough thrown stones can bring down even the mightiest warrior... at least before essence 4 or so)
  • Onslaught for flurried attacks should remain the same. Perhaps be moved to sametick onslaught? Even so, onslaught like that is good.
  • Lasting onslaught should be caused by something as well. Perhaps any successful hit even if it bounces off hardness or simply pings and rolls no damage, should also cause -1DV that lasts until refresh.
  • Another lasting onslaught possibility is more complex, but perhaps feels nicer - every 2*(Base DV) successes blocked, onslaught of -1, or some other such count so that you can block many cruddy attacks but only a few powerful ones before your concentration lapses. This would represent being pushed onto the defensive and off-balance quite well.

Last option preferred: Mechanics - every (Highest Base DV * 2) successes, which accumulate between attacks, you gain a -1dv penalty. This penalty counts as onslaught for charms which specifically affect / do not affect onslaught, but lasts until DV refresh. If you are forced to change defense value mid-turn, then you use that DV, but still count successes against both with the value calculated at your previous DV refresh.

Example:

Bob the Solar Exalt has a PDV of 8 with his shiny golden sword. His dodge is awful (3). As his moment arrives, he refreshes his DV. His DV step is now 16 (twice highest at DV refresh.) - Later in that turn, he is disarmed. Even though he's now reduced to his fists (DV 4) which can't even parry lethal anyway, he still benefits from a DV step of 16 until his next DV refresh. At that next refresh, his DV step becomes 8, and will not increase even if he reclaims the Daiklave of Parrylots later in the turn.

However, if he possessed the charm Summoning the Loyal Steel(or any other reflexive method of retrieving his weapon), he could reflexively invoke it as his DV refreshed (or before, if he had a spare charmslot) and thus claim his full DV of 8 and DV step of 16 for that entire turn.

actual ruling: only the largest DV penalty from attack actions in a flurry counts towards that flurry's total DV penalty

Comments: