GreenLantern/WhatIDontLike
There are just some things that break my mental image of the game. Maybe it's where the developer and I disagree, or maybe it's just me. But these are things I don't like.
- I hate that Sidereals can't make new charms. Everyone else can, even DB's, and there is just so much cool stuff that could be done via fate manipulation that it hurts. So many of the Siddie charms just beg for a charm or two longer trees, to show the really cool stuff off.
- I hate that Lunars have to kill things to take their shape.
- Note: Some Wikizens have made charms that get around this, and I love them. I just wish they weren't so required for Lunars in my mind.
Things you don't like
Your ideas are welcome here. If enough (2+) people add things, maybe this would deserve a top-level page, and would get better descriptive text, and such. For now, I've got to run out and eat Chinese.
- How fights seem epic, but then looking back are commonly around 10 seconds long...
- How infernals haven't been detailed yet...
- How there is very little Essence 5+ stuff
- How artifact creation is so varied (the rules in S&S aren't the most helpful)
- The 1e Lunars book. It had a few cool things, but overall failed to live up to the rest of the setting.
- The puny NPC stats. Ahn-Aru is said to have been an Exalt for 800 years in the 2e core, yet hasn't even mastered Violet Bier of Sorrows Style. And is only Essence 4. Whaaa? By the rules in that very book, she should have like 3500 xp just by living that long, even assuming she was never given xp PC style for major stories she was part of.
- There's no official social counterpart to Sorcery and Martial Arts. What I mean is, those two things are universal among Exalt types, because both involve shaping Essence in a conscious (as opposed to instinctive) way. Martial Arts are based in the physical body, Sorcery is based in the mind. There's no social counterpart.
- There still aren't very many hearthstones out there, and there's even fewer official descriptions of the manses they come from. There's a lot of beautiful fan work in this area, but not a lot of official stuff.
- More non-combat artifacts!!! ~Overshee
Comments
At least one of your complaints may be dealt with in a few weeks... - Hapushet
From Overshee, "How fights seem epic, but then looking back are commonly around 10 seconds long". I feel that this is a feature, not a bug. Look back at some of the blow-by-blow accounts in, say, The Iliad, or The French Book, or Morte D'Arthur, and then take a fencing course or a basic martial arts course. Barring the occasions where the fights are explicitly noted as lasting for hours - which are not all that frequent - even the most epic of duels in literature are frequently settled in a matter of seconds. - David.
- I know, but I'm more of a fan of the wuxia fights that last 3-10 minutes, where it goes back and forth until something big happens. ~Overshee
- Uh, I know that this place isn't intended as a place to proactively suggest improvements and changes to the system, but here's one, for your epic pacing: add a new miscellaneous action, let's call it Verse. Verse has no benefit except that each tick that passes while you are using Verse is a minute long. Two characters using Verse make ticks an hour long, or something. There are some time-unit charts bubbling around that you could use for this. Another character can interrupt your Verse with an Appearance + Presence action, reflexively resisted by your Appearance + Essence. This way, you are able to stretch out battles through days and years if your opponent allows it, but it is something that he can also tactically oppose if, for instance, his Charm durations depend on a particular time scale. - willows
- Actually, Willows, you're more than welcome to propose solutions - that was going to be my next page. Once I collected some common 'problems', I was going to see if the Wikizens could work them out. Feel free or even encouraged to start such a page, or to go crazy. -- GreenLantern
- Uh, I know that this place isn't intended as a place to proactively suggest improvements and changes to the system, but here's one, for your epic pacing: add a new miscellaneous action, let's call it Verse. Verse has no benefit except that each tick that passes while you are using Verse is a minute long. Two characters using Verse make ticks an hour long, or something. There are some time-unit charts bubbling around that you could use for this. Another character can interrupt your Verse with an Appearance + Presence action, reflexively resisted by your Appearance + Essence. This way, you are able to stretch out battles through days and years if your opponent allows it, but it is something that he can also tactically oppose if, for instance, his Charm durations depend on a particular time scale. - willows
- The things I'm always interested in are twofold: 1) Exalts tearing through mortals and Extras at high rates, with one-shot knockouts, and the like. 2) Exalts taking 30+ seconds for an Exalt-to-Exalt fight, as they run through the city streets, optionally taking out extras on the way. Thing is, the systems are incompatible currently, in many ways. If Exalts had 7 times as many HL's as extras, it could happen, but currently, it's usually three hits and you're down. Similarly, changing the amount of 'real' time per tick can lengthen Exalt fights, but unnecessarily expands extra-fights. Anyway, just adding my 0.02 dollars. -- GreenLantern
- Yeah, BESM 2nd Ed did that for fights. Unfortunately, there's a problem with it in RP - unless you make each round take 10 or 15 seconds, the only way for fights to go on over a minute is for combat to become INTERMINABLE. I prefer the blinding speed of Exalted fights, personally (also, 2nd ed fights with my group often hit 20 or 30 seconds long, which with enough slo-mo can be a 3 minute fight sequence. ;) )
- Also, are we allowed to 'second' comments? Because the Lunar heart-eating thing is one of my major pet peeves. - FrivYeti
Another quick comment on epic battles. A lot of epic wuxia and anime battles take longer than a few seconds for two reasons.
- The characters are able to defend against seach others' attacks most of the time.
- They have reason to stop fighting occasionally and talk to each other, because the fight is more than two guys beating the crap out of each other for the sake of it.
Not to mention the previously-mentioned slo-mo and multiple cuts showing parts of the same action. To achieve my #1, perfect defenses. Give them to your big bad guys. Don't be scared to use them. To achieve #2, make sure your PCs and NPCs want something from each other more than death. That way it's something like:
- 10 seconds of combat time, attacks get defended easily.
- A minute or so of talking, PCs pleading with NPC to stop his evil, release the hostages, give them the artifact, etc.
- 20 more seconds of combat time, perhaps with more bloodshed as more essence has been spent and weaknesses in strategies analyzed.
- etc.
This has worked out well for my group. - IanPrice
- Another thought occurs, regarding the timing of these wuxia fights. How frequently in the kung-fu movie do you see a character use a major kung-fu manuever, and how frequently are you seeing the character perform basic attacks and defenses? A simple out-of-character agreement to settle several turns in the combat though non-Charm-enhanced acts would extend the combat quite a bit, I think. - David.
- Several members of my group actually had to be taught to use charms more, because they weren't even using them in dire situations. - IanPrice
General Wikizen Question: I speak above of some charms that allow Lunars to not need to drink the Heart's Blood of things to gain their shape - yet I can't find them now. Does anyone know of where I might find those charms? -- GreenLantern
