Campaign Planning

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When Violence is Appropriate

Message One: Leith
You know it would own! Now to make my Lunar character based on Wolverine…

You could argue that the text on page 159 indicates that it is only the non-commander members of a unit whose health levels qualify for magnitude - fair enough as the commander's are already used to track damage to the unit. This means, incidentally, that the 70 HL Infernal, if he's standing in the background of a social scene looking HUGE, might be even more useful than the fan-waving courtiers.

The real reason I'm posting is that the HL ~ Magnitude conversion rules do need some tweaking. Specifically, as they apply to the (Magnitude - Drill) dice penalty (applied to all morale and maneuver rolls). You are penalised for being too badass! This is not Exalted. Basically, I think we should calculate Magnitude for those purposes based on actual number of unit members, or alternatively and more easily just assign a Drill bonus to cancel it out, in the corner cases where it becomes relevant (god armies is the only time it'll really come up; most all-Exalt units will be Magnitude 3 at most and it's easy to get Drill 3).

Also, on pages 164 and 165, under Dash and Disengage, it calls for the commander to make a roll. Is it an oversight or a deliberate policy that they don't allow relays to stand in for these maneuver rolls, but do allow them for all other such rolls?

On the matter of the campaign and the starting character level, I think we should work out what sort of campaign it is we're playing, work out which charms are genuine must-haves (based on campaign type), and then just give those out to anyone who meets the prereqs (HINT: GET TO DA PREREQS).

Message Two: Vic
I think the part that is supposed to balance out the ridiculously high magnitude of supernatural units is the fact that they're supernatural, which means more often than not they're going to be ignoring half the rolls you could get them to make anyway. The only example I can think of to counter that would be beastmen and fair folk, but they have the whole stereotypical barbarian thing going for them which means having shitty maneuvering and half their army fall to rout checks is perfectly in character for them.

As for type of character and campaign, having now read and comprehended Mandate of Heaven (it only took one day! You guys exaggerated how complex it is), I'm very keen on playing a "straight" Solars campaign ie discreetly building up an empire in some corner of creation (I'm thinking the Hundred Kingdoms), diplomancing everything to heck and occasionally throwing in an epic mass combat or two (Wyld Invasion, anyone? For long-term campaign fun, there's the hordes of Ma-Ha-Suchi hanging out not too far to the south, though obviously attempts to blunt that tide would probably start up very early in the game).

And yes, Mandate of Heaven is a pretty cool ruleset. Though it has some pretty obvious issues, they are easily patched up (one of the biggest ones is that characters may lack important excellencies if they are using charms to subvert the need to have skill points in the first place, which you can patch by allowing 2 charms requiring a skill X = free excellency in skill X for the purposes of Mandate). The only part that makes it really complicated is that a number of abilities and attributes are double-edged swords, but this simply serves to encourage you to have a balanced society with a good number of flavorful specializations to flesh out the local colour. Also, Mandate of Heaven means that there's actually a purpose to having social backgrounds! Not a huge purpose, but the fact that one exists is quite nice.

Also, uhm, I guess I could maybe learn archery or something to make my character contribute in combat. Doesn't really go with the character concept I'm most interested in playing, but I could slowly build it up in play? Alternatively, Martial Arts with a custom charm tree.

Message Three: Leith
Yeah most problems I have noted with the Magnitude rules are total corner cases. Until the demon legions break free from Malfeas, anyway.

As for Mandate of Heaven, the rules may not be complex, but they fully are that hard to comprehend; unless you (oh I don't know) have access to a well prepared summary? Link us to this Exalted 200 page; searches for it produce the startling result that the internet consists of a series of strings… alphanumeric strings.
 * Also, uhm, I guess I could maybe learn archery or something to make my character contribute in combat. Doesn't really go with the character concept I'm most interested in playing, but I could slowly build it up in play? Alternatively, Martial Arts with a custom charm tree.

If we use mass combat a lot, which I'd quite like, you can play as a sorceror, hero, or relay in any unit we form. Relays need War and Performance (mostly War); that might not work either?

The other thing to keep in mind with character concepts in Creation is that many people will study a martial art for the purposes of enlightenment rather than combat, whether it's Martial Arts per se or another combative technique. Zen Archery is an obvious parallel. My Dawn Caste, Kai Shen, was a reclusive monk who studied Archery, Melee, Martial Arts, and War as a purely contemplative exercise, until the Exaltation placed the mandate of Heaven on him.

Martial philosophy is an important and real part of Creation because might, entirely literally, makes right. This is a recognised and celebrated fact in most cultures. The cycle of empire, usurpation, and empire is graven on the face of history and the future, ever since the Primordials were thrown down. That act will echo throughout time, and bitches betta reckonize.

On that note, Bestowal of Accursed Fortune doesn't rewrite history or memory, but proceeds through a series of unlikely but plausible coincidences. If we're not playing Infernals, be very very careful around people who have suddenly achieved their positions.

And I am a dork. The actual reason, which I forgot, that I felt it was worth writing an email yesterday is because Vic was totally right about Fury-Inciting Presence. Exalted is a superheroic game, and saying "that's not the sort of thing you can do with a normal roll" is a statement worthy of sharp scrutiny. I started by saying 'well what if it were difficulty 5?' That is, a legendary feat. Yup. In fact the Performance summary on page 107 says someone with Perf 5 can start a riot with a short speech. Or they could use Fury-Inciting Presence!

So, mechanically, F-IP reduces the difficulty of the inciting by maybe 5. I'm stretching the social combat rules here? I would add MDV bonuses for really difficult acts of persuasion, like going from calm crowd to riot in 5 minutes. So, at most, a Solar might want to spend 10 motes on excellencies to counter that increased difficulty. F-IP costs that and a willpower. Not as grotesquely useless as I had thought, but this charm is definite speed-bump material. On the plus side it lets you use War if you'd like, yay.

If we remove the willpower cost I think it's still a speed bump, but it saves War-focussed characters from having to buy the Performance excellency. Assigning a variable cost of 2m per point of difficulty in inciting the riot would mean it would retain its original function, but cost less to turn an already riotous crowd into a unit under your command.

And let's make it non-obvious, because if you can do it with natural persuasion then plainly, it's not obviously magical. Also, you can then combo it with an excellency and whip up crowds without having "I AM A SOLAR AND YOU ARE NOW MINE" erupt into the sky in magenta fireworks every time a dawn caste gets jiggy wit it.

Message Four: Vic
Leith McLean wrote:
 * If we use mass combat a lot, which I'd quite like, you can play as a sorceror, hero, or relay in any unit we form. Relays need War and Performance (mostly War); that might not work either?The other thing to keep in mind with character concepts in Creation is that many people will study a martial art for the purposes of enlightenment rather than combat, whether it's Martial Arts per se or another combative technique. Zen Archery is an obvious parallel. My Dawn Caste, Kai Shen, was a reclusive monk who studied Archery, Melee, Martial Arts, and War as a purely contemplative exercise, until the Exaltation placed the mandate of Heaven on him.

I'm very much keen on the idea of having nothing but Mass Combat scenes. In an empire-building game, it seems like solo combat would mostly feel out of place because the scope of the encounter isn't large enough. You'd only legitimately encounter solo combat if you're on a stealth mission, the rest of the time there's no real reason not to have a couple of hundred elite guards with you just as a matter of course. After all, having an army like that and living at the edges of creation pretty much invalidates any Wyld Hunt attacks upon you (cause how the fuck are they supposed to ship an entire legion past Lookshy quickly and stealthily?). So yeah, if you are fighting something and you're not either running the fuck away or slaughtering it without even spending peripheral essence then it would feel pretty awkward, I should think.

But yeah. 100% keen on Mass Combat, because while it still incorporates some of the weird issues of solo combat, the biggest one is completely averted (having to build over nine thousand gratuitous combos and use them every round just so you can use whatever reflexive charm you want whenever you want). There's also some lovely strength in numbers going on which allows your characters to cover each others faults perfectly. Finally, I just feel like the scale of the encounters would be far more… EXALTED. Why fight ten dragon-blooded when you can fight fifty dragon-blooded and ten thousand men with only your three hundred man honor guard to help you?

As for Martial Arts, Archery, etc, yeah I can totally pick it up but it would be something I'd want to roleplay rather than just "oh yeah she exalted now it's kung fu tiem". And I'd probably go archery since it falls in more with my character's shtick of being weak in raw force but more capable than anyone (including herself) gives credit for. Short version of character history is that my character was born into a military nation but had no real combat ability to speak of and was painfully naive. She got sent off on a raid by her brother, who then usurped the throne that was rightfully hers (okay maybe not, depends how progressive we decide the kingdom should be). The raid went badly, she got captured by the barbarian tribe they were attacking and had to talk her way out of being executed. One GREAT SUCCESS later, and she's back with a small barbarian tribe (not represented by background points because ew), supernatural powers and one hell of a grudge. There's more to it, but that's the part that is relevant to her lack of combat abilities. But yeah, she'll probably have the whole "oh, now that I'm exalted I don't have to struggle so much to learn combat abilities". She'd probably still have to get scared by a fight or two before she actually breaks out of the quasi-pacifist thing, though.

Actually Archery makes a lot of sense given that it's probably less common and I can just bullshit a claim that strength of arms is respected in this kingdom whereas archery is often considered cheating. So she never got taught it and didn't know until recently that she might actually have passable combat skills.
 * And I am a dork. The actual reason, which I forgot, that I felt it was worth writing an email yesterday is because Vic was totally right about Fury-Inciting Presence. Exalted is a superheroic game, and saying "that's not the sort of thing you can do with a normal roll" is a statement worthy of sharp scrutiny. I started by saying 'well what if it were difficulty 5?' That is, a legendary feat. Yup. In fact the Performance summary on page 107 says someone with Perf 5 can start a riot with a short speech. Or they could use Fury-Inciting Presence!

They could also use Heart-Compelling Method and pay 4 less motes, 1 less willpower and force everyone hit to take -2 Willpower to resist joining up. But that's not really a valid comparison, because Heart-Compelling Method isn't designed to be a speedbump and is in the performance tree where those sorts of effects are supposed to come from, rather than War which is far better for doing the sort of stuff that's in the rest of the War tree.

I was going to leave the rest quoted but your thoughts on the matter pretty much mirror mine. I'm of the opinion that it should be perfectly acceptable to rework most speedbump charms in the game so that they are actually moderately useful. I mean, they don't need to be great charms by any length, but paying 8 XP for a charm that the average character will NEVER use is not really very nice. Which is actually why I'm so keen on mass combat, random normally useless reflexives FTW.

Message Five: Leith

 * how the fuck are they supposed to ship an entire legion past Lookshy quickly and stealthily?

Not necessarily sneakily at all. They could just send an envoy to Lookshy with the (completely honest) claim that they need to deploy a legion to take out Anathema. The dragon-blooded of Lookshy feel much the same way about the Usurpation as do Realm Terrestrials, though they lack the Bronze Faction's meddling to stole that fire. Lookshy steps up it's riverside garrison for a few days, largely as a show of force, the Realm ships pass, and everything returns to normal.

I wonder how common and accepted social charms are in diplomacy between DB heads of state?

If stealth were desirable, they could claim to be reinforcing Greyfalls, which has always been acceptable to Lookshy, and is completely plausible in the wake of the Tepet disaster. Lookshy customs officials are likely more focussed on taxing river traffic than searching holds, reserving the serious security for ships docking within a day or two's march of the city.
 * maybe not, depends how progressive we decide the kingdom should be

In Creation, a nation need not be progressive to have women inherit. Maybe it's a repressive matriarchy, or women have some special religious significance or political prestige. Maybe she's been usurped by her sister, or maybe her brother is defying the will of Heaven to seize power.

Maybe archery is a womanly pursuit, and melee is for men.

Message Six: Vic
Leith McLean wrote:
 * how the fuck are they supposed to ship an entire legion past Lookshy quickly and stealthily?
 * Not necessarily sneakily at all. They could just send an envoy to Lookshy with the (completely honest) claim that they need to deploy a legion to take out Anathema. The dragon-blooded of Lookshy feel much the same way about the Usurpation as do Realm Terrestrials, though they lack the Bronze Faction's meddling to stole that fire. Lookshy steps up it's riverside garrison for a few days, largely as a show of force, the Realm ships pass, and everything returns to normal.Lookshy was more of an example than anything.

Fact is though, they're going to have to go down one of the rivers to get out to the east, which means going past Lookshy, Nexus and Great Forks (amongst others), which means they'll definitely be spotted and if you have spies in even one of those towns you can get word of their approach potentially weeks before they show up. I'm certainly not saying it wouldn't happen, just that you have a certain degree of immunity to "Airship appears, Dragon-Blooded fall, everybody dies". With a decent sized army and the Wyld Hunt the way it is, you're unlikely to receive any challenges from that direction until you start expanding dangerously westwards. Fair Folk, Barbarians and Lunars, on the other hand… but they're a slightly easier enemy to deal with, since diplomacy is actually *possible*.
 * I wonder how common and accepted social charms are in diplomacy between DB heads of state?

My view of social charms in general is that they are considered bad form. I'm sure DBs can get away with it in social combat against mortals, but against another DB it'd probably be viewed as pretty naughty.

Not that this should ever effect you, I would imagine there are probably entire treatises on how to use social charms without making it obvious. Hell, DBs are probably taught good social charm etiquette in their academies.
 * maybe not, depends how progressive we decide the kingdom should be
 * In Creation, a nation need not be progressive to have women inherit. Maybe it's a repressive matriarchy, or women have some special religious significance or political prestige. Maybe she's been usurped by her sister, or maybe her brother is defying the will of Heaven to seize power.Maybe archery is a womanly pursuit, and melee is for men.

This is all stuff that we should probably hash out together when we are closer to getting the game ready. That said, I was planning my character to come from Nechara, which means there is very little fluff to get in the way of inventing whatever you want, while providing plenty of fluff to hash out what the political situation is like. If you have any details about Nechara's actual society (maybe from 1st Ed?), then that might be helpful too. Also, input on where exactly we want to centre ourselves. But yeah, I'm pretty damn keen on Nechara.

Starting Position
Vic:

Okay, so I've been thinking a lot about our starting position in the game, and I think it would be good to start off in command of the Ten Tribes. They're a weak and broken down tribe after their god Elder Oak abandoned them in favor of the cities, but they still retain a bit of tribal pride and a lot of guerilla tactics and local knowledge. Also, they're not INSANE like the Arczeckhi, which makes them a lot more promising. Basically the reason why I'd like to start with a barbarian tribe is because I think it would be good to start with next to nothing, while I also think that Nechara should be a good early-game goal for us to begin our diplomatic conquest of the Hundred Kingdoms. You can find a lot of details about the Ten Tribes, the Arczeckhi and the Republic of Chaya (another local attraction) in Compass of Terrestrial Directions: The East.

For the record though, I was thinking we'd ignore the paragraph about Dark Eyes, yet another one of the many millions of batshit insane Lunar Exalts who controls a tribe of miscellaneous vagrants and doesn't do jack shit except stand around and look menacing. Seriously, I'm getting sick of that shit, Mahalanka (Sperimin) and Ma-Ha-Suchi is enough crazy Lunars for one campaign, and they're both far more interesting and credible than generic "Dark Eyes the Lunar who is low essence and hasn't done anything exciting and in fact apparently fails at life as a Lunar because all she has is one puny tribe out of ten, that's, what, a magnitude 1 domain? Wow, clearly that's an epic task for an Exalt rather than being something for a God-Blooded AT BEST." So yeah anyway in my idea of "the story so far" I have replaced her with a God-Blooded who I've taken as Radiant Emerald's Ally. Poorly thought out fluff issue averted!

Continuing with this rant though, I'd like to point out that there are practically no canon examples of Lunars who are members of the Thousand Streams River Project, nor are there many Lunars who do what they're goddamn supposed to and stick around at the edges of the Wyld battling fair folk and being silent observers. There's also only one canonical Lunar in the West, even though that's the most logical place to find a vast army of Lunars (more barbarian and animal life there than anywhere else in Creation, and the Realm's ability to interfere is somewhere between limited and fuck all, depending on how deep you go). Seriously, WW, what the fuck! First edition "we so craaayyyzy" Lunars didn't make sense and so now that they've been retconned so there's only a few of them STOP ADDING MORE FOR NO GODDAMN REASON.

For the record, can I just request right now that the only batshit insane Lunars we encounter without going out of our way are Raksi and Ma-Ha-Suchi? Both of them are immensely powerful and utterly babyeating insane, so adding any more only serves to cheapen the "oh shit it's a crazy lunar!" effect down to "oh god, not this shit again."

EDIT:

Actually, having now looked up Dark Eyes I can officially say "what the fucking ever", because he is the worst designed character I have ever seen White Wolf produce. Seriously, he's laughably poor, single mindedly focused on combat yet not even comparable to a Blood Ape in combat performance. If anyone feels really insistent on making him actually exist in this setting then I could just take him as my Ally instead, his power level is definitely "comparable to a starting Dragon-Blooded", and his feeble mind would make it a laughing matter to sway him to our side (Parry MDV of 2 spending max motes, Dodge MDV of 1, cannot spend motes to improve... no mental defense charms... TERRIBAD!)