SagaciousAscendingHero/HouseRules2Comments

I decided to make a separate page for comments, so I dont have them at the bottom when I print this stuff out. But I get to keep them around.

Comments

I’m just use this as a sounding board for my own house rules that I’m developing. You're pretty rules conscious/savvy, so I think it'll help. Rate and Parry: On page 147, under DV penalties, it mentions nothing about limited amount of parries due to rate, and on 373 rate only mentions max # of attacks. Am I missing something, or is this just a clarification for your group?

• Yes, this is just a clarification. Notice the little blurb I have at the top of the page? - SAH

DV's and bullets: What is your reason that bullets are particularly more dangerous to exalted than arrows made of essence flying at you in a swarm from a mountain top 60 miles away, or essence powered bolts of light/darkness/evil/fire/water/death? (serious question, I couldn't think of a way to make it sound not sarcastic, but it really isn’t)

• You know that was something I put in there for my 1E rules and now that you say it like that I guess there really isn’t a reason, consider that clipped. - SAH

POM and Defense: Is the spirit taking a Guard action to refresh his defense value? In which case, could he instead use a Charm (like Fivefold Bulwark Stance or some equivalent) to deal with the attacks? For that matter, couldn't he just make an attack, immediately preceding LL's attacks? (depending on his remaining POM actions.) Also, SS is acting at the same time as LL, because POM actions can only be taken during your turn?

• I kind of forgot that you could take a Guard action to refresh your DV, but no. The way I'm handling this is like an exception to the rule of acting only when its your turn. I've now changed the above text to reflect this. -SAH

POM: Are you allowing string POM activations? IE Activate POM, get 5 actions, attack 4 times, use last POM action (thus having expended all your pool of POM actions) to activate POM again, and go till u run out of motes/willpower? This would put the fear of Gods into the Exalted players... but may allow a god to just destroy the party w/ attacks and charms. (This is legit via the rules, but possibly overpowered)

• No, although its technically allowed by the base rules, it is, as you said, completely broken. - SAH

Notable POM Limitation: POM activations are, essentially, outside the tick order, as many occurring as you have/want to use during a given tick. As movement during combat happens every Tick (Move: pp145, Dash pp143), using POM to take 3 extra action during your tick in no way allows you to circumvent the normal movement per tick limitation. Thus, at worst, your can POM the hell out of a single person, unless you have the use of some instantaneous movement charm.

• Yeah, the way I envisioned POM is that from the moment of action, you see multiple blurs of the spirit/eclipse each doing the separate actions. Then as they finish, only one blur shows to be still there. Probably which ever action had the longest speed, player decides on ties. - SAH

Question: How do you handle simultaneous actions?

• Same way the book says to handle them. All actions take place and the results aren’t dealt with until the end of the tick. - SAH
  • Then there is a small problem i've ran into: If you activate Leaping Dodge Method in response to a flurry or extra action charm, you get to leap back, but since all actions take place essentially at the end of a tick, you don't ge to move till then.... meaning that the flurry or extra actions are all resolved there, hitting you... then your mangled corpse gets to leap away? =)
• Yes. - SAH

~Sab

• By the way, I assume Sab is short for Sabis, and this is who I think it is? - SAH
  • Yes, it's short for Sabis. No, it's not the one you think it is, it's that other guy. Ya know, the one w/ the stuff? Yea, that guy.
• You dork... - SAH

It seems like your Third Excellency houserule is going to drastically increase the power of the Excellency as it compares to the first two. Effectively, it's now a dieadder that can be added after a roll is finished, and adds dice equal to the number of dice that do not come up a success. On average, that will add 0.6 dice for every die on the initial roll, which means that it will become better than the First or Second Excellency for sheer mote return at 7 dice (not counting the additional advantage for being able to spend Essence after the fact). Also, this will increase the power of attacks as compared to defense, since static values won't get an equivalent boost. How has this worked out in play? - FrivYeti

• We've found it to work just fine, and its really the only way I see a reroller making any sense. As I had previously mentioned in that section, spending 4 motes for the possibility of a worse result seems very un-Exalted and un-Epic to me. You have a point that it effectively makes it a die adder, but its a bit of a crapshoot. You could possibly roll very well the first time and only have three dice to reroll, where as if you had taken the first excellency, you could be rolling up to maybe 10 more dice. Now, if I saw someone abusing this, I might change my mind, but most of my players use their 1st excellency the most, with only one particularly bad roller who uses the 3rd on a regular basis. In other words, it works for my group, but I see how it could be an issue in other games. - SAH

I really appreciate what you've done with the Knacks, and am borrowing them for my own Houserules.
Cheers,
~*~Braydz~*~

I notice that you claim that the Out-of-Aspect surcharge is 'minor' and removing it won't change things much. In my experience, it's quite the opposite. DB's already small pools are much more quickly sucked dry by reflexive use of OoA charms, especially their personal pools. When you're talking 12 motes in your personal pool on a good day, you can get 6 2-mote activations, or 4 3-mote activations. That's a fairly big deal, before you start tearing up the place. Over long fights, it gets even more interesting - if you assume you're burning one charm per action, and stunting back to recharge, over a 12 round fight, you're 12 motes below the other guy. A full personal pool down. 25% of your motes changes the way you play, and means you're well into high-anima peripheral. To avoid it, my players tended to stay with charms in-aspect, amplifying their elemental natures as much as they could. I dunno - it seems significant to me, at least. -- GreenLantern

• You have a point, but I guess its always been just a complete hassle to remember for me and my players so I don't worry about it. - SAH

Wait wait wait.... Unlimited reflexives during every turn for everyone? And... this doesn't break your whole system? What lead to this change, and how is it working out in your game? Are mote reducing effects and mote regaining abilities suddenly being picked a lot more frequently?

--Sabis--

• Haven't actually had a chance to playtest this, as the one game I started after instituting this rule made it one session before never being ran again. Hopefully I should be starting a new game soon and will have feedback for you. Though I'm also removing artifacts & hearthstone powers so that's gonna have its own effect on the game. After a couple sessions, if I like how things are going, I'll revise my rules again and update for my current play style. - SAH
• Found a better way to handle my issues with charm limits and stole someone else's house rule of one charm per tick instead of action, so I removed the unlimited reflexives. - SAH