Talk:Notes on Rules Problems

Clinches
Clinches are weird anyway. All you need is to succeed once and the enemy character is dead, because they count as Inactive. Most characters who fail a clinch probably don't have enough dice in Martial Arts to escape after they get held, so you just crush them to death. Even better, all the other exalts in the circle spam flurries until your clinch target explodes in a fine red mist. Naturally, always perfect against Clinches.

* While it's true that clinching someone reduces their DV to 0 before charm use, it has exactly the same effect on your own defences. So clinching is a two-edged sword. Additionally, being clinched in no way impairs the use of reflexive charms like Dipping Swallow Defense. As for getting out, using a stunt could allow you to use Melee, Dodge, or many other Abilities to escape a clinch. Clinching isn't the auto-win you make it out to be - at best it's a situational massive advantage. o Counterpoint: You cannot use charms while Inactive, apart from charms that specifically say they can be used while Inactive. Although the rules under Inactive (p143) aren't any clearer than "you cannot defend yourself", the rules for Eternal Elemental Harmony (p210 - and similar charms I cannot be bothered finding) are quite clear on the matter. It is debatable whether this was intended or even realised when the rules for Clinches were written. --VictorW 05:11, December 28, 2009 (UTC) + Oh wait, the Clinch rules specifically override this restriction, which I'm pretty sure wasn't even meant to be there in the first place. Up to you whether you've realised by now that the Clinch rules are fucking messy. Even so, you (debatably) can't use flurry breakers and you automatically fail your roll against anyone who attempts to re-establish surprise (due to Inactive), which they may do freely since the big fucker holding your head is also blocking your sight. So you need to spend a surprise-breaker and a perfect defense and/or DV resetter against every single attack. And your enemies know this and will probably use a magical flurry combo. So you may not be dead, but if your enemy happens to consist of a full circle of clued-on and battle-ready PCs then you could probably expect to spend somewhere in the area of 90 motes in one action. As with many things in Exalted, it's a case of "Exalted with any sense will perfect defend against it, anyone else explodes in a shower of blood." + ps: If you happen to be fighting against the 99% of creation in the "anyone else" category, then using Crashing Wave Throw off a cliff or to power a piledriver is a pretty hilarious way to generate that lovely shower of blood effect that's all the rage in Creation nowadays. -- Vic

The clinch rules are fine, provided you know where they conflict with the general rules, which I do. Firstly, clinches allow reflexive actions, which includes resisting attempts to re-establish surprise. It doesn't expand the scope of re-establishing surprise, so that whole vein of thought is a red herring. As for facing an entire circle of battle-ready PCs, the antagonist can cry harder imo. They'll be using full/perfect defences whether clinched or not.

With all the exceptions from the normal Inactive rules, it's barely accurate to say 'Inactive' at all. At a glance, the only effects of Inactive that apply are
 * your DV drops to 0
 * you may not take non-reflexive, non-clinch-compatible actions
 * you may not move
 * your action comes every 5 ticks
 * your DV refreshes and your action becomes available the instant the Inactive state ends

The clinch rules exclude all other actions from the normal Inactive prohibition. --McLeith 07:32, December 29, 2009 (UTC)

PS: Crashing Wave Throw is its own cliff - you can achieve terminal falling velocity with a straight vertical throw.

Stunting unfailable actions
Moved to talk page in my unending quest to get discussion off the main pages. --McLeith 01:02, December 20, 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh wait, you are referring to SSE and the like? I see no reason not to grant rewards for the action, this is a game where defense has primacy after all. This way the unbalancing is in favour of defenses over attacks like usual, whereas otherwise the unbalancing would be in favour of Resistance perfect defenses over regular perfect defenses. Resistance PDs are already powerful, even if the rest of the tree is pretty lousy. -Vic
 * The main game balance reason for not giving stunt rewards to perfect defences is that it can a) bog combat down in endless stunts, making stunts boring, and b) assuming those stunts are allowed and achieve 2 dice (which no sane ST will allow to go on, but let's roll with the rules-computer version for a second), the combat will in theory go on forever, or longer, as the Exalts spend 3-4 motes on each defence, and regain 4. I think actually it was you that pointed this out to me in the first place; those are precisely the concerns I was trying to address. --McLeith 01:02, December 20, 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually you regain 1 willpower per 2 die stunt because you're spending a combo every action. If you don't spend a combo every action then you are going to spend WAY more than 3 motes per action in order to perfect defend against every single attack in the flurries which your opponent will doubtless be launching. And then his sneaky friend stabs you in the gut. If you do spend a combo every action then the combat comes down to how long you can keep up 2 die stunting. This is perfectly reasonable, because it means that there's a roleplaying requirement for keeping fighting and you keep the fight from getting boring because if things aren't exciting then your willpower regeneration slows down (as I agree that the ST will not let you keep 2 die stunting forever, however hopefully your opponent slows faster so you can unleash omega death combo #1 on them first). Saying "it doesn't count if no dice are rolled" just makes combat take even longer when the main resource that's being spent is Willpower. --VictorW 07:00, December 20, 2009 (UTC)
 * As for Resistance perfect defences, what's great about them? I was under the impression Resistance was famously bad, not famously good. Adamant skin technique only affects the damage of an attack, while HGD and SSE both avoid riders like poison, crippling, etc. Unbreakable Warrior's Mastery is so crap they published an addon charm to make it useable. So for the price of 3 charms you get a (sizeable) fraction of the functionality of the other perfects. --McLeith 01:02, December 20, 2009 (UTC)
 * The thing which is great about them is that 80% of the "bad touch" effects require you to deal at least one level of damage in order to take effect. With the errata establishing that step 10 damage adders don't work against Resistance defenses, this makes them the most powerful perfects available. Yes, they don't protect you against bad touch effects which don't rely on damage, but on the other hand they do protect you from unexpected attacks, flurries (in combination with persistent DV charms) and mass combat in ways that other perfects simply fall short on. You also get to apply your DV to the attack, making them vastly more efficient mote-wise (even though motes are a second-tier resource compared to Willpower imo). Without a combo, yes, you are weak against extremely rare effects. But without a combo other perfects are weak against extremely common effects. A combo containing both types of charm is the only real option if you want to be a srs bsns combat exalt, because evasion based PDs are way better for surviving long enough to escape the fight than they are for sticking around and wrecking shit up. --VictorW 07:00, December 20, 2009 (UTC)

Vic's Setting Gripes
''Because I've been reading too much fluff lately! From least to most significant.''

As far as I can recall, the issues on the main page are the only significant rules problems I have with Exalted. But I would like to "quickly" gripe about the few things in an otherwise excellent setting that really get to me. Tiny but acceptable issues are the "crazy and/or stupid" Lunars as a holdover of 1e and the somewhat 40k-reminiscent way the game seems to be almost uniformly written from a "Solars are awesome FUCK YEAH SPEZZ MEHREENS" perspective, which is acceptable enough even if it sometimes grates (incidentally this is why I'm totally into with the idea of a "good guys" Infernals campaign). Anyway, apart from those minor gripes:

Abyssals! Yes, you've probably heard me complain about them. Stupid shit tier Solar emo dicks, their only purpose is to allow for cheesy "mirror matches" in which your mirror is actually subtly but significantly weaker than you and so the conclusion is pretty much foregone. They're also the worst offenders for "lol u didn't use a combo now u r ded". Finally, they're effectively hardwired to have only two speeds, megadeath and accidental crying repentant death. All aboard the resonance railroad! But this is also not what I have to gripe about, just a related tangent of my main rant.

The big thing that fucks me off about Exalted canon: Deathlords and the oncoming apocalypse: For fuck's sake WW, get over your goddamn Antediluvian apocalypse bullshit! "The world is ending in 15 years due to extremely old supernatural creatuers" oh yeah that doesn't sound fucking familiar or anything does it? 1st edition statted Deathlords up as actually viable opponents (if, y'know, you have an entire circle of combat optimized Solars), but when they realised that they decided "oh we can't have players actually using these statblocks to achieve anything" so for 2e they made it so that they cannot see the light of play because actually allowing your players to come face to face with them as printed is the equivalent of tearing up your player's character sheets, shitting on them and then setting them on fire. Seriously, they might as well have just replaced the statblock with "for character stats, see The Lady of Pain" and it would be far more accurate than actually assigning numbers to gigantic plot devices. Except, oh wait, they're the lowest tier of plot device character in the game! Next up is Celestial Incarnae, then Neverborn, then Yozis. The Missing Sidereal is maybe highest on the list (having a charm to remake reality in one's own image without anyone knowing: it's awwwright!), but Nara-O only knows what that one is up to.


 * Note: fuck, I can't believe I didn't realise until now that "The Missing Sidereal" is just WW's version of D&D's Ao, aka the motherfucking ST/DM.

Anyway the short version of this little rant is that "oh noes apocalypse" is a deprotagonising cliche which they should have sliced out of the game in 2e like they did with nWoD, and Deathlords should never have got stats in the first place because their only purpose is to make the characters feel useless.

Anyway, Exalted has a mostly awesome setting and all that, I just think Abyssals are a creative abortion and also it fucks me off that they go "hey here you go have limitless power to be awesome" and then quickly turn around and go "but don't entertain any thoughts about actually contributing anything because the game is going to be over before you are allowed past essence 5, also there are giant zombie ghosts that kill you without a diceroll."

The redemption of the Deathlord issue is Storyteller fiat saying "BLOW THEM UP WITH THE FIVE METAL SHRIKE and/or DIPLOMANCE THE FUCK OUT OF THEM." Which is workable enough, but considering how insanely many end-game bosses there are who are even bigger threats than the Deathlords I really would think it should be acceptable to actually legitimately kill just one Deathlord with a circle using good tactics at the end of a high essence campaign, even if the fucks come back without plot device hax.

As for the apocalypse angle I think you have to logically accept that Solars, your character's circle specifically, are going to be the cause of the apocalypse. Deathlords are too smart (and have too many Fetters) to actually want creation to end. Deathknights maybe, but between the Spectral "issue", Solars with Holy charms and Lunars/Sidereals of both factions/Dragon-Blooded/Infernals who will kill the fuck out of them they just aren't serious competition. Infernals would never kill creation, they have big hearts and no great curse and oh just by the way do you think we could put a big fire where the blessed isle is? That would be nice. Let's turn the oceans into acid, too. We'll make everyone immune, it'll be a party! I'll bring the beetles of sinful deliciousness, you bring the dip of a thousand torments.

Goddamn I rant a lot when I get started! You can probably ignore all of this though since it shouldn't ever actually be an issue in game unless Shawn's temper reaches "Tarrasque". It just kinda gets to me sometimes that some STs out there might actually take WW's grimdark shit seriously and wind up actually running with the Abyssal campaign ending outside of an Abyssal series. Even in an Abyssal series I think it'd be pretty lame. "Rocks fall, world is over."

Of course, all this is leading up to me saying that the shitty "default" endgame plot is about to get a wonderful alternative that I hope will live up to my expectations! I really think the Exalted writers have got their shit together a lot recently and started picking up on the things that aren't really up to par with the rest of the game, and I'm hoping for big things from the franchise in the next year or two. Gotta say I'm kinda wondering if we're on the cusp of 3rd Edition though...

notes on combat timing
Movement in combat

When does it occur? By RAW, each character moves each tick. There are no real problems with this, but it seems wildly impractical to get everyone focussed and deciding where to move every tick. An alternative is to have people move on their action, a total distance equal to the distance they could cover during that action. This is more abstract, and slightly less realistic, but in individual cases where the tick-by-tick position really matters, tick-by-tick movement can be used.

move each tick realistic/tightly defined cumbersome move each action more abstract/loosely defined smoother reinforces 'turn-based' feeling

This leads to a second question, regarding: Actions in combat

When do they occur? By RAW, they occur on the tick on which your character acts. So in order to run up to someone and hit them, you take some move or dash actions, then an attack action. Again, it works fine but

blurring the timing would allow melee characters to keep up with the less mobile flurry-breakers (take that, Abyssals! Oh yeah you like pain!) moving during attacks = cool stunts more flexible timing rules generally are easier to work with and again, in cases where exact timing is a point of contention, exact timing can be used

McLeith 11:38, October 17, 2009 (UTC)