Exalted Third Edition: The Tomb of Dreams

[Gregness]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

I'm definitely way more motivated to get the 3rd edition books now. The lower lethality of combat makes me feel like there is more room for me to do interesting things. Also, I feel like I kinda want to try and break the initiative system at some point.

Heh, I've found the system to be fairly robust, given that the full rules have little GM sidebars that say stuff like 'no, your players cannot attack each other in order to get initiative, and you should thwack them with a newspaper if they try'. What're your first few ideas?

Originally Posted by Mauve Ma-- Wait No WIZARD Yeah Mauve Wizard

I learned it's very hard to come up with sick combat/dodge stunts for a character who is very much [b]not [\b]a combat-focused character. But it was an enjoyable game nonetheless.

Honestly, I really liked your stunts! Even if Arcanum's 'Imma yell at the wolf' parry stunt ended up being my overall favorite of the night.

[Sithdarth]

Originally Posted by Mauve Ma-- Wait No WIZARD Yeah Mauve Wizard

I learned it's very hard to come up with sick combat/dodge stunts for a character who is very much not a combat-focused character. But it was an enjoyable game nonetheless.

At least you didn't have to try to come up with a stunt for chanting.

Originally Posted by Gregness

Heh, I've found the system to be fairly robust, given that the full rules have little GM sidebars that say stuff like 'no, your players cannot attack each other in order to get initiative, and you should thwack them with a newspaper if they try'. What're your first few ideas?

Without spending some time with the core rulebook and a bigger selection of charms and artifacts I'm not entirely sure how things would shake out. However, it seems in general there should be an optimum combination of evasion and soak that'll minimize initiative loss and then from there it is just a matter or maximizing initiative gain. Of course the first step to high initiative is a high join battle roll which should be compatible with high evasion.

Another thing that would be potentially useful is mixing in some high mobility to move into and out of range quickly.

[Bard The 5th LW]

The session definitely got me interested in the system, and I hope to play/run it at some point in the future! A lot of the new systems seem really intimidating in the core book, but the module did a good job at breaking them down, especially combat. I kinda worried that I knew more than my character towards the end there, but it seemed to go well enough.

[Gregness]

Originally Posted by Sithdarth

Without spending some time with the core rulebook and a bigger selection of charms and artifacts I'm not entirely sure how things would shake out. However, it seems in general there should be an optimum combination of evasion and soak that'll minimize initiative loss and then from there it is just a matter or maximizing initiative gain. Of course the first step to high initiative is a high join battle roll which should be compatible with high evasion.

Another thing that would be potentially useful is mixing in some high mobility to move into and out of range quickly.

Hah! I was expecting you to be trying to make some pun-pun-esque rules abuse monstrosity. Where I come from we just call all that 'being heavily invested in combat'.

Seriously though, It's possible to make some really, really beastly combatants, especially once you get into higher essence (which is 5 for most purposes in Ex3 now. Essence 6+ is explicit ST permission territory), but each combat ability kind of has its own 'thing' that it's best at, with other abilities being able to exploit different niches. Brawl has the best single target damage potential and specializes in killing the everloving shit out of giant monsters, and dodge gives you the absolute best defense against a single person. Melee tends to be a solid generalist tree, plus has really good clash-enhancing charms and penalty negators. Resistance has the stuff you want if you're getting mobbed on by a ton of opponents, and just in general makes actually killing you ridiculously difficult (in fact, the newbie advice from previous editions of 'buy an Ox-Body' that was always kind of a trap purchase is actually a solid idea now with the way extra health interacts with initiative). Thrown really rewards dropping a huge alpha strike out of stealth and Archery gives you range, efficient damage adders, and one of the few withering clashes in the whole charmset.

And all that is even ignoring the fact that non-dawn castes can make up some pretty mean combat builds in their own right. Zeniths have a ton of familiar-enhancing charms in Survival that can enable a pretty mean beastmaster style, and nights and eclipses can be annoying as hell with a ride focused build that kites almost forever.

You can certainly buy your way into a big chunk of that, but at that point you're an Essence 5 master combatant of the Solar host, which is exactly the kind of being that is explicitly intended to be dunking rings around the vast majority of the setting. As far as I know there's no weird loophole abuses a-la kobold sorcerers or infinite wishes or anything like what existed in past editions of D&D.

[Sithdarth]

Originally Posted by Gregness

Hah! I was expecting you to be trying to make some pun-pun-esque rules abuse monstrosity. Where I come from we just call all that 'being heavily invested in combat'.

That would be a feat for me to accomplish without having really seen the entire ruleset. However, there might be something along the lines of maybe Hulking Hurler level lurking in the rules especially as the amount of content grows. Once you've got an artifact book, a dragonblood book, a sidereal book, an alchemical book, an Infernal book, and an abyssal book (maybe a first age book as well) then you've definitely got some room to play with the really really broken stuff (i.e. characters that can move at relativistic speeds).

But honestly I don't enjoy going that far usually. I like to limit myself to things I think I could realistically sneak by the person running the game. I guess "break" might have been too strong a word. I'm definitely interested in testing the outer limits of what can be accomplished when you specialize a character in initiative.

I'm more for choices that are maximally efficient and highly synergistic that when combined with the right strategic play make me basically as powerful as a full circle of characters at my level. I'm not usually looking to build starting level characters that can complete end game content. I'm looking to build starting level characters that will face roll starting level content and could probably handle things meant for characters a few levels higher.

[Gregness]

Ooh, we've got new previews for the Dragonblooded! They did the first of these previews a few weeks back to show how they're giving charms elemental keywords, rather than just have each tree be 100% one element or another, and now part II is showing how they'll be able to manipulate 'aura states' to power up their skills (also, combat charms this time!).

[Sithdarth]

Dragon's hidden treasure could be good for shenanigans. I'm thinking store a bunch of dangerous things (possibly that explode) in a boulder then chuck it very hard near an enemy to destroy it and release all that stuff to damage the enemy. Basically tactical nuke if done right.

[Gregness]

Another preview for Dragonbloods!

I like the direction they're going with the charms so far. One thing I've seen from people who are fans of Dragonblooded is tension between people who want them to be Avatar-style benders, and people who really like the more metaphorical effects like fire-aspected 'my eyes smolder seductively for extra successes'. There was a quote that went something like 'It's stupid that my elemental supersoldier can use the constancy of earth to hold fast to his principles, but not build a wall'. It looks to me like they're threading the needle and delivering both.

Also, as someone who's a total strategy nerd, that War charm is the shit.

[Gregness]

Motherfuck. I just lost a big post I was making trying to summarize all the various updates and previews from the last few weeks, only to have it get eaten. Let's see how much I can bring myself to reconstruct:

First up, MOAR PREVIEWS! This time it's detailing the Empire of Prasad, one of the new-to-Ex3 Realm Satrapies along the Dreaming Sea. It sits in the area between Kamthahar and Champoor in the lower-right section of the map. There's a lot of cool details here, like the jati stuff which was apparently adapted from the Indian caste system, as well as the notes about the quasi-heretical offshoot of the Immaculate Philosophy that they use. Also, though this isn't mentioned in the article itself, Prasad has ~2000 dragonbloods, which makes it the third or fourth most concentrated faction of Exalts in the setting.

In addition to this, they've started making good on the periodic NPC releases and there's already been a lot of good stuff:

First, Ragara Feria serves not only as an experienced dragonblood in her own right with the stat block, but she has a partial artifact write up as well as our first look at dragonblooded dice-adders, which we haven't seen before. Where the Solar Melee excellency works on both attack and defense and comes free with any amount of investment in the Ability, Dragonblooded dice adders seem to be full charm purchases, split by attack and defense, but with extra bonuses to make up for it:

"Stoking Bonfire Style (1m per die; Supplemental; Instant; Uniform): Add up to (Melee + Specialty) bonus dice on an attack roll. If Feria uses this Charm to attack the same enemy over multiple consecutive rounds, its cost is reduced by one mote for each round (minimum 0). Attacking another enemy or going a turn without attacking resets the discount.

Blinding Spark Distracting (2m per +1 Parry; Reflexive; Instant): Add up to ([Melee + Specialty] / 2) to Parry. Successfully blocking a close range attack blinds the attacker (Exalted, p. 168) until the end of his next turn."

Next, the Rantai is an underworld creature that's a real nasty piece of work that's comprised entirely of chain links made of bone, with ghosts barbed on them which the beast uses to battle or bargain with. "It isn’t above parleying to learn its enemies’ Intimacies, then trying to murder those Intimacies to strengthen itself and capture their ghosts for leverage."

I don't know if forgiveness is the right word, exactly, but the new rate of previews and actual releases is a welcome piece of proof that the dev change wasn't just symbolic. Arms of the Chosen is supposedly coming out in the next month or so, and hopefully we get the first of the dragonblooded books before the end of the year.

[Gregness]

Here's a new preview from the upcoming Dragon-Blooded book. This one focuses on House Tepet, one of the ruling Great Houses of the Realm.

Fear-Eater is surprisingly memorable considering he's only in the intro fiction, and there's a lot of neat plot hooks in among the alliances and major holdings sections. Tepet Niruz also seems like a rad character, and I'm hoping Medo ends up with a more detailed writeup someplace to get a better picture of them.