Most damaging accident in history.
Roleplaying related memes!
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bintananth
behind a desk
If those were d10s the headline would read "Exalted player involved in car accident."Most damaging accident in history.
Or, "Super Munchkin Werewolf player eviscerates entire coven of elder vampires in one swipe!"
There are no stupid questions?
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
My character PROBABLY could be see meme worthy
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
My character PROBABLY could be see meme worthy
bintananth
behind a desk
Well done.My character PROBABLY could be see meme worthy
The last time I played DnD my character was a hafling fighter who used a lance named Wander with a dog-and-pony show named "Bill" and "Ted". Bill was a St. Bernard. I got a bad 4d6 drop one set of rolls after I said "I'll play the meat shield" and just went with it for shits and giggles.
TheRejectionist
TheRejectionist
@bintananth just a quick question... would you help me out customizing / recalibrating it a bit?:Well done.
The last time I played DnD my character was a hafling fighter who used a lance named Wander with a dog-and-pony show named "Bill" and "Ted". Bill was a St. Bernard. I got a bad 4d6 drop one set of rolls after I said "I'll play the meat shield" and just went with it for shits and giggles.
Because I wanted to do this character being half goliath and the other half... half elf.
So the character needs some redo.
bintananth
behind a desk
I doubt I'd be much help. Wander was a DnD 3.5e character.
We play Exalted 2.5e (I have all the books and errata). My current game just picked up three more players. STing Exalted is akin to "herding cats" ...
bintananth
behind a desk
Eh, the basic system is pretty intuitive. A lot of the garbage is overblown. Blade of the Battle Maiden, fr'ex. got harped on for being unbalanced. At my table a PC or NPC who knows it is a Sid, no non-canon exceptions.Ah, Exalted. Such a great world with such a garbage ruleset.
BTW: That meme is spot on wrt. to warstriders. Barring a game centered around defending Lookshy from a serious threat they're about as useful to a PC as a Gem of Immortality.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Eh, the basic system is borked for the game it's supposed to be. The real problem is that they sold Exalted as some incredible epic fantasy where you play a fantastically powerful god-king and then went "but muh realism" at every turn. You want a Warstrider? Well tough, giant robots aren't realistic so it might as well be a giant gimp suit. You want to play a hugely muscled dude in a lionskin? Might as well make another character sheet now, you'll need it in two minutes if you're not wearing armor, surviving without it is unrealistic. You plan on playing a badass like John McClain who can fight through his pain and keep going? Well that's unrealistic so the wound penalties are going to stack up unbelievably fast and good luck making a character who can't be killed by a 12-year-old armed with a kitchen knife on a good die roll, it's totally unrealistic that anybody, even your supreme overlord who's supposedly tough enough to fight entire armies and win, will survive that so the game's lethal as all get out.
Though, perhaps they fixed that in later editions. My first experience with Exalted was with two other players building characters the way the book advised, then facing half a dozen rando low-level bandits with bows. It was a total party kill, the bandits slew all three of us in one turn. That's how your immortal superhero-like god-kings roll in Exalted, they splatter like a tomato against any enemy stronger than a chihuahua.
So we went through the rules, realized the book was a lying liar who lies, then built paranoia combos and realized that now, since we had to use those combos to auto-evade all damage no matter what, it became boring as heck. Damage didn't matter, health levels are so low that a hit from a plain dagger and a hit from a grand goremaul were both going to kill anyone they struck so the only option was to wear as much armor and throw as many defensive charms as possible, and using offensive charms was certain death as you were spending resources that could be used to keep defending on an attack that was just going to be blocked by a perfect attack anyway.
And a meme to stay a bit more lighthearted...
bintananth
behind a desk
@Bear Ribs,
Sounds like you had the Exalted ST equivalent of a Killer DnD GM pulling a "Kobalds kill the party" TPK.
Incapacitating an Exalt without Ox-Body (or a Heroic Mortal) takes 17-18ish dice of rolled damage. Even one who isn't combat focused probably has a DV of at least 4. Low-level bandits are extras. Half of them should have fled at the sight of an artifact or caste mark while the other half got penalties to their already abysmal 4-dice of accuracy with a bow.
Sounds like you had the Exalted ST equivalent of a Killer DnD GM pulling a "Kobalds kill the party" TPK.
Incapacitating an Exalt without Ox-Body (or a Heroic Mortal) takes 17-18ish dice of rolled damage. Even one who isn't combat focused probably has a DV of at least 4. Low-level bandits are extras. Half of them should have fled at the sight of an artifact or caste mark while the other half got penalties to their already abysmal 4-dice of accuracy with a bow.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Vatnik
Skitzyfrenic
Well-known member
Exalted is yeah. Hyperlethal. Which is great when you're cutting through mooks. Not so great when the rules make it so those mooks can murder blend your god-king so long as there are enough of them.
At least in 1st and 2nd. I'd bet on Ex 3 but I've not played that.
At least in 1st and 2nd. I'd bet on Ex 3 but I've not played that.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Nothing of the sort, the DM was as shocked and stunned as we were and immediately called for us to make more powerful characters. The problem is that the 2E rulebook actively lies to players (It advises skipping perfect defenses in favor of taking Ox-Body multiple times, which is utterly worthless. Yeah, a single -0 health level per Ox-Body is really gonna help compared with invincibility at will.
It's been quite a few years and I don't recall the exact details but it was just a half-dozen bandits of middlin' level, something like 2/3 trait and skill for their base pools, firing from ambush with bodkin or frog-crotch arrows and mundane longbows. This had them throwing something like 7-8 dice from taking aim, weapon accuracy, and base pool. I'm guessing this was updated in future versions because in 2E those extras only needed to land a hit (and most of them rolled a couple of extra, increasing damage even more, and the outrageous levels of weapon.
It was pretty easy to hit our DV since we hadn't realized that building strong characters with high stamina was suicide compared to building dodge-monkeys. On top of that being ambushed means most charms quit working unless you use another charm to negate surprise, and since we hadn't made paranoia combos and you can only use one charm at a time normally, well...
Edit: Should add, the party was highly non-optimized defense-wise for roleplaying reasons (though we didn't realize remotely how bad it was). I was playing a fisherman who Exalted after punching a shark to death when a storm washed it into his boat (Planned to gradually evolve into a Cheng-Shi like Pirate Lord leading entire fleets), and had received a vision via some spirit to pick up the other two players who were freshly exalted slaves. My fishing boat was their ticket off the Blessed Isle and the "safety." So I didn't have any armor on because seamen generally don't wear anything heavier than leather and there's nothing like that in the core rules, the lightest armor is, like, a breastplate. The others were a Dragonblood Sorcerer's body servant who had managed to pick up a couple of spells from exposure and a guy playing a beggar who attained Buddha-like enlightenment, so they were wearing a stolen silk robe and rags, respectively. The sorcerer's death of Obsidian Butterflies could have easily wiped out all the bandits in one hit... if he'd lived long enough to pull it off. But without the protection of lots of armor we were just hosed because of lethality.
And a meme:
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Blasterbot
Well-known member
well I get it but if you look at the media that inspired it it makes sense. Anime in general tends to emphasize dodge being better than tanking. some shonen animes will go the opposite route but the whole speed and skill beats strength thing is something they emphasize. not always realizing that strength does not in fact always sacrifice speed and in many ways speed requires very strong muscles.
bintananth
behind a desk
"The highest of the high can be laid low by their inferiors" is a core theme of the setting. In that regard an Exalt without applicable charms == a slightly less squishy heroic mortal makes perfect sense.
Fr'ex, an essence 5 Solar with Blazing Solar Bolt in an extra-action combo can make any DB without Bottomless Depths Defense have a very bad day. That same Solar might not be literate.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Yeah, once you work through it it makes a bit more sense. But that's not at all how it's presented. Just take a look at the intro comic:
Lots of hugely muscled guys with bare torsos, very little armor, being able to take a hit and get back up repeatedly emphasized.
And then the rules themselves capitalized on it, telling players the best builds used stuff like Ox-Body that was guaranteed to get you killed if you tried to play with them. "The rulebook always lies" was a meme on RPG.NET for years specifically in how Exalted's core rulebook feeds you completely false information on how the system works and actively guides the player into suicidal builds, such as the aforementioned. Like thi
bintananth
behind a desk
Agreed, the comics do overplay the awesome. The Solars in the one you shared are statted in the books:Yeah, once you work through it it makes a bit more sense. But that's not at all how it's presented. Just take a look at the intro comic:
Lots of hugely muscled guys with bare torsos, very little armor, being able to take a hit and get back up repeatedly emphasized.
And then the rules themselves capitalized on it, telling players the best builds used stuff like Ox-Body that was guaranteed to get you killed if you tried to play with them. "The rulebook always lies" was a meme on RPG.NET for years specifically in how Exalted's core rulebook feeds you completely false information on how the system works and actively guides the player into suicidal builds, such as the aforementioned. Like thi
Dace and Panther: strength 4
Harmonious Jade and Swan: strength 3
Arriana: strength 2
Two dots represents human average. With a sane ST who isn't out to get the players dex:3, dodge:3, a dodge excellency, 1x Ox-Body, and some armour goes a long way. The books aren't wrong about that.
Places like rpg.net also have a very vocal subset of roleplayers who think a starting PC should be able to solo God and expect to win. They'll complain loudly - and they did - when that's not supported by the rules because they want "Instant invincibility, just add chargen."
While Exalted is not close to L5R levels of "your character is squishy so have a backup handy". The game also doesn't pretend that all the PCs should make it out of a fight alive or be ressurrectable ... which is what players used to DnD sorta expect in my experience.