Quote from: Orphan81;900849So, I decided to get down my old 1e Exalted Core, Dragon Blooded Core, and 1e Player's guide to make some comparisons. Let's take a look.

Let's start with the Dragon Blooded and their "I can't believe it's not Perfect" Defenses. This isn't to insult anyone, I literally want to take a look at the Hard Data and see what was going on in our campaigns to find out why things were so different..

So in terms of combat ability, the Dragon Blooded have a few neat charms..

Thrown has Persistent Hornet Attack which was one of my favorite to use against my PC's... It's an annoying distraction, but that's all it is.. an annoying distraction... A single strike takes it out of the sky. Of course when used by an Essence 6 or 7 Dragon blooded that's hard as hell without charms, but your common dragon blooded it's going to be a 2 or 3 difficulty.

Wind Weapon is also pretty good, but the character needs a Thrown of 5, and at base, they only do 3 damage (min essence required) and you can throw 3 of them. They can be split between multiple targets or all thrown at one target... But if a Solar uses a perfect, well they're all wasted. Still, if you can get about 5 successes per attack, you can get around a base 8 damage for each one... Again though, if the Solar is wearing a Chain Shirt with a Stamina 2, you're looking at rolling 4 dice at difficulty 7.. about one damage... If they're wearing medium armor of Lamelear... you're rolling 1 dice of damage for each attack...If using power combat, that DB will get at least 3 dice... a decent attack, but unless you're rolling all 7s, it's still pinging a target.

Elemental Bolt attack does a base 2L for every essence point spent, limited by the character's stamina.. You're average DB is going to do about 6L which is shit damage in Exalted. They also still have to hit the target.  Elemental Blast does 1L per essence and is an area attack but is stlll limited... Also, both of these attacks can be parried...PARRIED...

Dragon Vortex Attack is actually a scary attack, but it Requires an Essence 4, Lore 5 Dragon Blooded... Which means a Veteran of about 100+ years... Most Dragon Blooded don't ever achieve Essence level 4 or 5, and it's important to remember that.

Five Dragon Invulnerability is a perfect defense.....unless the attack is made with a weapon of the 5 magical materials, backed by a charm, or is socrery...than it just gives you extra soak equal to your Essence... 3 extra soak for 1 attack, and all it cost was 5 motes and a willpower!

Five Dragon Wrath lets them do multiple attacks equal to their essence, against 1 target, for 1 essence per attack and 1 Health level of damage. However, the defender only has to make 1 parry roll to block all of them..

Impervious Skin of Stone is good... except again, any attack backed by a charm completely ignores it..

Defense from Anthema is actually a good charm to fight Solars.. it cost  6 motes and 1 willpower and requires a minimum essence of 4 Resistance 5... But you add +4 difficulty to all attacks backed by charms against you. Not something your average DB is going to have, but awesome if you're making an Elder DB and making him fucking dangerous.

Falling Star Method is a nice little adder for DB's, you can double your essence as extra damage before soak is applied.  Nice to use if you don't do anything else for an attack.

Safety among enemies is nasty....If the attacks are grouped together. If the PC's are standing in a cluster around one another, they deserve to get hit by this attack. Otherwise this is very situational, in closed quarters it's good...

Arrow Consuming Method is also a nice one... but again, if the weapon is five magical materials, or stone... they completely ignore the charm.

Portentious Comet Deflecting attack is a perfect defense costing 3 motes and 1 willpower.... and it automatically fails against any attack powered by a charm or made of magic materials.

Threshing Floor Technique is perfect if 10 Dragon Blooded get to 1 Solar by themselves... and is completely useless if it's against an entire circle (Unless the number of DB's multiplies by a factor of 5 for each 1) and the moment the Solar has a scene long defense, it's less than useful.

Rising Anvil Onslaught cost 8 motes, and lets you roll base melee alone. Each success gives you 1 extra attack against a single target. Extra attacks become less of an issue when Solars have scene long defenses.

Anyways, that's enough for the base Terrestrial Charms, the big thing to come away with from them is the following..

1.) Dragon Blooded have Zero perfect defenses effective against a Solar, and Zero scene long Defensive abilities.
A Solar circle who simply attacks a single Dragon blooded together is going to kill them in 1 round. The poor bastard just doesn't have anything they can do beyond use a shit load of soak charms, hope and pray...

Which leads into two..

2.) Their dice adders can only spend essence equal to their ability score.

3.) Their best Charms are behind a Essence 4 minimum wall..
 
Unless you're a cruel GM, most of the Dragon Blooded your characters encounter at the beginning of the game are going to be Essence 2, and are going to be about 3 in their chosen attributes. Your Solars should not be running into Essence 4/5 Ability 5 Dragon Blooded every where they go. On equal terms, 4 v 4 the Solars should completely and utterly mop the floor with average Dragon blooded. It shouldn't even be a contest, the Solars just have so much advantage..

Bigger Essence Pools, Bigger dice adder charms, Better Ox-Body, Better Charms overall.

By Comparison let's briefly go over some of the common 1e Solar Charms..

One Weapon two blows is a double attack against one opponent right out the gate, for only 2 essence(PG errated it down from 3). Peony Blossom is 1 extra attack up to your permanent essence for 3 motes. These are early level charms...

Dipping Swallow Defense gives you an immediate defense against any attack for 2 essence. The Dragon Blooded have nothing like it. It's a very early charm.  Five Fold Bulwark is a scene long defense, and of course Heavenly Guardian is a perfect, it's also cheaper than the Dragon blooded version 3 motes to 5.

Solar Counterattack just makes things worse when combined with a scene long defense.. Not only do they get to roll to defense against the Dragon blooded attack, but they also get a free attack on the Dragon Blooded... which if successful and kills them, negates the DB's attack entirely..

God forbid the Dragon Blooded is stupid enough to use threshing floor technique and the Solar activates "Ready in 8 directions" in response... that is a shit ton of dead dragon blooded.

Blazing Solar Bolt is an autohit on a Dragon blooded. They literally cannot defend against it in any single way.

Accuracy without Distance is also an automatic successful hit against a DB target, they have no way to negate it.

Trance of Unhesitating Speed, again 3 motes per extra attack..

Arrow Storm Technique lets a Solar hit every single target in an area in one round. If the Dragon Blooded Wyld hunt brings a contingent of 20 mortals with them. This charm will kill every single one of them in a single round. (Remember as Extras they only have 3 health levels, 9 raw damage is an automatic kill)

For 5 motes, Cascade of Cutting Terror can give a PC 20 to 26 dice for an attack (Depending on if you allow specialties to +3) against a single target. Once more, the Dragon Blooded cannot use any defenses against this. The only thing they can do is pump up their base dice pool and hope they can parry.

Blood Thirsty Sword Dancer Spirit gives +3 to all of the Exalted dice pools and lets them completely ignore all wound penalties for the scene..

Iron Skin reduces any attack made against the character to minimum damage (Typically essence) and is Compatiable with armor, which brings hardness into play and can reduce the damage to 0 then.


Anyway, that's enough with the Solar charms. There are just so many ways the Solars can no sell a Dragon Blooded attack while also turning them into a fine red mist. 1st edition Exalted fit the setting... It took hundreds of Dragon blooded and thousands of mortal troops to take down a single experienced Solar. A group of 5 Solars with 3-4 sessions under their belt, are going to steam roll 5 competent Dragon blooded.

Now if you're using a Dragon Blooded whose a Master of an elemental style... that's 12 charms and a minimum essence of 4. This is not a starting Dragon Blooded. This is a Dragon Blooded Elder. Given their charms are equivalent to Celestial level, the character is no longer fighting a typical "Dragon Blooded", they are fighting something that's almost a Celestial Exalted... they should expect a tougher fight..

But 5 Solars against 1 Master? They're going to kill that master good..

If your PC's were falling before the might of Dragon Blooded, they either made incompetent characters, or the enemies you were throwing at them had gobs more experience points than them.

Props for being good at the rules but, ugh! Look at that! That's fucking ridiculous! There is far too much micromanaging and bookkeeping for a GM. And Ex3 is the most intricate version, supposedly? Fuck that.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;900852Not to mention the frequent, "Hold on guys, I need to read this Charm again...". The theory of Exalted has always been awesome and it was so different and cool when it was released. The practice has blown screaming chunks at the moon for a very long time.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;900855Props for being good at the rules but, ugh! Look at that! That's fucking ridiculous! There is far too much micromanaging and bookkeeping for a GM. And Ex3 is the most intricate version, supposedly? Fuck that.

I maintain, still, that Exalted is a game that actively despises the GM.  If there's a way that to complicate the GM's life, it does it!

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;900852Not to mention the frequent, "Hold on guys, I need to read this Charm again...". The theory of Exalted has always been awesome and it was so different and cool when it was released. The practice has blown screaming chunks at the moon for a very long time.

Yeah, that wasn't particularly enjoyable. Nor the fact that you had to power down the bloody thing just so we didn't get one shotted.

Quote from: Nexus;900802It doesn't take their best. "Typical" Dragonblooded will do particularly when they can outnumber a Solar Circle 2-3 to 1. With the difference between Celestial and Terrestrial power narrowed and most of the Terrestrials likely being more experienced (particularly given the stats in the book) and it becomes more lopasided.

The "underfunded" Wyld Hunt just means they must prioritize their targets more instead of playing Wack-a-mole anytime a Solar pops up. They don't show up on your door step the day after you Exalt. The problem being that the moment you start to do the things the game bills itself as being about you ping and here comes the hammer. Particularly building a power base since that' allegedly something Solars are good at (though there little mechanical support for leadership and kingdom building but that's another issue.)

Also its been stated the Realm isn't as "weak and staggering" as it was before...


The Empress and her access to the Realm Defense grid never was the Bronze';s primary weapon against the Solars and other "anathema". It was the Immaculate Order, it military and its spiritual grip on most of Creation. It provides resources, information and slows Solar power build up. Their warriors are exceptionally powerful and they have to pull to draw in mortals for backup.

The Sids other best resources is Heaven and the Bureau of Fate: information, supernatural resources and comparatively lightning fast transport around Creation via Celestial Gates among other things. Again, it doesn't a hit squad of Sids just one with moderate Essence that gets surprise. And they're very good at that or they can just sic other opponents on you.

Nexus, I sincerely think you have not understand what I was trying to say about the Scarlett Empress and the Bronze Faction. But it is my bad, I was kinda unclear on this.

First of all, I want to be clear. My knowledge of the setting of Exalted comes from the 1st and 2nd edition of which I own a fuck ton of books (owning RPGs books is my vice and most of them were bought cheap on Amazon), so I ignore the setting changes induce by Ex 3 (wich I have not intention to buy before I do not want to reward with my money the unsufferable bunch of windbags that the Ex 3 development team is).

I never intended to write that the Scarlett Empress is the main asset of the Bronze Faction against the Solars. She is not ! Their main asset was the fucking cube prison where they put the Solars exaltations at the end of the Usurpation. The Wyld Hunt was implemented to destroy the rare Solar was escape the soul prison, only one popped every decade (this fact explained why it is not efficient in the current state of affairs in Cration since now 200 Solars have made their way back to the world). The Ream Defense Grid is there to fuck up the Faeries (which is a good thing for all the beings living in Creation) but it is totally not the adequate tool for Solar hunting (killing flies with nuclear bombs is not cost efficient).

The Bronze faction views the Scarlett Empress as an useful tool for their vision of Creation under the Dragon Blooded rules (hence the Bronze Faction) because they suffer from the vizier syndrom (or the Iznogoud syndrom). Note the Empress is not their tool of choice but rather of convenience.

The Siderals are only an 100 strong and all of them are not members of the Bronze faction. So all of them are not hell bent to destroy the Solars whenever they appear (a wild Solar appears ! ^_^). Morever, a siginificant number of them actually oppose the Bronze Faction (the Gold faction) and they have some ressources to oppose the scrying of the Bronze faction. And the Siderals have also more pressing matters to attend than the resurgence of the Solars : the disappearance of the Empress and the chaos that ensues in the Realm (the looming civil wars of the main Dragon Blooded Houses), the Deathlords and their minions threats which is a big unkown for the Siderals and their jobs in the Celestial Bueaucracy, to name of few.

The Wyld Hund is currently underfounded and view has a relic of the past where sent unwanted Terresterial Exalted, with few exceptions (unless they change this in Ex 3 and screw they if they have done that !). So I seriously doubt that is a reasonable expectation to say that your 4/5 strong Solar Cirlce is bound to fight against a comptent fighting force of 10 to 15 strong experimented Dragon Blooded ! The Realm is in a dire state (in compraison of its best times), so no useful Exalted will diverted in huntinf the Anathema (again, they might have change that and again fuck them in the ear for this !).

@AsenG : I am a he (actually i should write that my personal pronoms of choice are he/his/him or that I identify as a he/him/his but the Patriarchy is strong in me ! ^_^) but knowing my given name (which is Yann by the way) would not help you anyway to guess my gender since it is a name that can be given to boys and girls indifferently (same speeling and pronounciation). And, of course, me hating agreeing with you was a factious remark from me and a jab to the fact that you are one of the few users there who enjoy Ex 3, something that I glad for you given the money you have put in it !

Quote from: Snowman0147;900851Why are we looking at first edition rules?  Is there any example dragon bloods in the third edition?  We should look at that since this forum is about the third edition.

The discussion veered toward whether Solars were capable of taking down their opposition in the first place under any rule set. Nexus's experience tells him No, my Experience tells me yes. I broke down first edition rules to support my hypothesis.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;900855Props for being good at the rules but, ugh! Look at that! That's fucking ridiculous! There is far too much micromanaging and bookkeeping for a GM. And Ex3 is the most intricate version, supposedly? Fuck that.

I completely agree... but back when I had just turned 20, and was a college student when 1st edition Exalted came out, I had plenty of time to learn all the rules, and so did my players.. and yet even then, as the campaign went on, the sheer list of powers became overwhelming..

Now in my mid 30s, I don't want to go anywhere near it. I'll just use Godbound instead.

Quote from: Orphan81;900818Thrown in PC stunts and they should be getting essence back on every action as well.

And there's the rub.  In every single campaign I played in, except the one I ran, the GM was an absolute fucking dick about stunts.  You could give one guy a fucking essay about the awesomeness of your attack and he'd be like "here's your 1 mote stunt."  Another guy just didn't.  I had to deprogram one guy because he was slowing down my game with the essay stunts because it was total overkill.

No 2 die stunts and suddenly your combos are SUPER limited.  No stunts at all and your motes run out fast and you hit essence displays faster.  Even then a lot of stuff is not very mote efficient so stunts never really fully recover so you get ground down.

Yes I realize this is all shitty GM stuff but honestly all WW games have been shit head magnets as far as I can tell.

Quote from: KingCheops;900926And there's the rub.  In every single campaign I played in, except the one I ran, the GM was an absolute fucking dick about stunts.  You could give one guy a fucking essay about the awesomeness of your attack and he'd be like "here's your 1 mote stunt."  Another guy just didn't.  I had to deprogram one guy because he was slowing down my game with the essay stunts because it was total overkill.

No 2 die stunts and suddenly your combos are SUPER limited.  No stunts at all and your motes run out fast and you hit essence displays faster.  Even then a lot of stuff is not very mote efficient so stunts never really fully recover so you get ground down.

Yes I realize this is all shitty GM stuff but honestly all WW games have been shit head magnets as far as I can tell.

Yeah 1 and 2 die stunts are supposed to be super easy. Like 1 die, did you say more than "I hit him with my sword?" Here have a stunt die and some essence. For 2 die stunts: did you use the setting, ANY PART OF THE SETTING, in your stunt? Kick up some dust, breeze blowing through your hair, kicked off a wall, ANYTHING? Congrats, here's a two die stunt and some essence.

You see similar things in D&D 3.x and above where the DM sets average difficulties too high.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;900855Props for being good at the rules but, ugh! Look at that! That's fucking ridiculous! There is far too much micromanaging and bookkeeping for a GM. And Ex3 is the most intricate version, supposedly? Fuck that.

It was/is a chore to gm. And the Rock/Paper/Scissors methodology in combat was annoying. Most things had counters but if you lacked those counters you tended to go splat. "Rocket Tag" as some called it and lead to John Chung Exalted and paranoia combos.

re: Stunting: It was more difficult for some than other from both sides of the screen. You weren't supposed to repeat stunts and battles could be protracted it did get mentally taxing for some and a little repetitive since it was so critical. GMs sometimes felt that it was either redundant or "too easy". It felt more forced than fun since it was such vital things to do. The change in mote economy is one thing in 3rd that I do regard as a positive with odd situations it can create.

Quote from: Orphan81;900849But 5 Solars against 1 Master? They're going to kill that master good.

Just for accuracy sake it was 3 and a Lunar NPC. The characters are as I recall were built along the suggested guidelines and rating for capable combatants and by raw ratings looked good. I'm actually less of an optimizer than most of the people I played with so it wasn't fabulous builds that were leading to issues. And it wasn't just one group.

In general, I can't stand having to judge players to reward them, at least when it comes to stunts. I've known/know great RPers who get tongue-tied during stunts and I refuse to penalize them for not being what WW/OPP saw/sees as worthy. Their pretentiousness is staggering when it comes to stunts...or their games in general, to be honest.

It's not just stunts that I'm light-handed with. If a player can't come up with snazzy IC dialogue, I don't penalize them because "they didn't role play". Their dice can do the talking. I don't make the player of a fighter show me his skill with a greatsword, the dice do that. If somebody's amped and uses the same stunt over and over, that's fine. The basest description is enough to make me happy.

Quote from: Nexus;900824The messiest tpk I had was 2 Night, a Zenith and Full Moon Lunar NPC who were slaughtered a single Immaculate Monk (water stylist) and  around a half dozen mortal soldiers. Either they were using their charm for the turn for a Perfect (because you did not want to get hit with Death spiral and Bad Touch effects the Immaculate could dish out) or they were throwing combo and burning WP. The DB had some nice "I can't believe its not Perfect" effects and could keep their defenses pretty high. Safety Among Enemies was a bitch particularly in that fight along with Bottomless Depths Defense and Drowning in Blood. All the PCs died. IIRC, the Monk lost 3 HL and almost all the mortals were fine.

That was the worst but a typical example of how combats went. Frustrated the Hell out of my players. In the end I had to simply let them start at Ess 4 or 5 and hand out charms like Halloween candy to balance them against the setting. Or ignore the published material. Or both.

Man, Water Dragon is an equalizer. But still, not daring to attack? Even when using comboes?
Didn't nobody have a Perfect Defence+Attack Dice Adder combo, or something? Because then the DB dies, pure and simple.

Quote from: Orphan81;900849So, I decided to get down my old 1e Exalted Core, Dragon Blooded Core, and 1e Player's guide to make some comparisons. Let's take a look.

Let's start with the Dragon Blooded and their "I can't believe it's not Perfect" Defenses. This isn't to insult anyone, I literally want to take a look at the Hard Data and see what was going on in our campaigns to find out why things were so different..

So in terms of combat ability, the Dragon Blooded have a few neat charms..

Thrown has Persistent Hornet Attack which was one of my favorite to use against my PC's... It's an annoying distraction, but that's all it is.. an annoying distraction... A single strike takes it out of the sky. Of course when used by an Essence 6 or 7 Dragon blooded that's hard as hell without charms, but your common dragon blooded it's going to be a 2 or 3 difficulty.

Wind Weapon is also pretty good, but the character needs a Thrown of 5, and at base, they only do 3 damage (min essence required) and you can throw 3 of them. They can be split between multiple targets or all thrown at one target... But if a Solar uses a perfect, well they're all wasted. Still, if you can get about 5 successes per attack, you can get around a base 8 damage for each one... Again though, if the Solar is wearing a Chain Shirt with a Stamina 2, you're looking at rolling 4 dice at difficulty 7.. about one damage... If they're wearing medium armor of Lamelear... you're rolling 1 dice of damage for each attack...If using power combat, that DB will get at least 3 dice... a decent attack, but unless you're rolling all 7s, it's still pinging a target.

Elemental Bolt attack does a base 2L for every essence point spent, limited by the character's stamina.. You're average DB is going to do about 6L which is shit damage in Exalted. They also still have to hit the target.  Elemental Blast does 1L per essence and is an area attack but is stlll limited... Also, both of these attacks can be parried...PARRIED...

Dragon Vortex Attack is actually a scary attack, but it Requires an Essence 4, Lore 5 Dragon Blooded... Which means a Veteran of about 100+ years... Most Dragon Blooded don't ever achieve Essence level 4 or 5, and it's important to remember that.

Five Dragon Invulnerability is a perfect defense.....unless the attack is made with a weapon of the 5 magical materials, backed by a charm, or is socrery...than it just gives you extra soak equal to your Essence... 3 extra soak for 1 attack, and all it cost was 5 motes and a willpower!

Five Dragon Wrath lets them do multiple attacks equal to their essence, against 1 target, for 1 essence per attack and 1 Health level of damage. However, the defender only has to make 1 parry roll to block all of them..

Impervious Skin of Stone is good... except again, any attack backed by a charm completely ignores it..

Defense from Anthema is actually a good charm to fight Solars.. it cost  6 motes and 1 willpower and requires a minimum essence of 4 Resistance 5... But you add +4 difficulty to all attacks backed by charms against you. Not something your average DB is going to have, but awesome if you're making an Elder DB and making him fucking dangerous.

Falling Star Method is a nice little adder for DB's, you can double your essence as extra damage before soak is applied.  Nice to use if you don't do anything else for an attack.

Safety among enemies is nasty....If the attacks are grouped together. If the PC's are standing in a cluster around one another, they deserve to get hit by this attack. Otherwise this is very situational, in closed quarters it's good...

Arrow Consuming Method is also a nice one... but again, if the weapon is five magical materials, or stone... they completely ignore the charm.

Portentious Comet Deflecting attack is a perfect defense costing 3 motes and 1 willpower.... and it automatically fails against any attack powered by a charm or made of magic materials.

Threshing Floor Technique is perfect if 10 Dragon Blooded get to 1 Solar by themselves... and is completely useless if it's against an entire circle (Unless the number of DB's multiplies by a factor of 5 for each 1) and the moment the Solar has a scene long defense, it's less than useful.

Rising Anvil Onslaught cost 8 motes, and lets you roll base melee alone. Each success gives you 1 extra attack against a single target. Extra attacks become less of an issue when Solars have scene long defenses.

Anyways, that's enough for the base Terrestrial Charms, the big thing to come away with from them is the following..

1.) Dragon Blooded have Zero perfect defenses effective against a Solar, and Zero scene long Defensive abilities.
A Solar circle who simply attacks a single Dragon blooded together is going to kill them in 1 round. The poor bastard just doesn't have anything they can do beyond use a shit load of soak charms, hope and pray...

Which leads into two..

2.) Their dice adders can only spend essence equal to their ability score.

3.) Their best Charms are behind a Essence 4 minimum wall..
 
Unless you're a cruel GM, most of the Dragon Blooded your characters encounter at the beginning of the game are going to be Essence 2, and are going to be about 3 in their chosen attributes. Your Solars should not be running into Essence 4/5 Ability 5 Dragon Blooded every where they go. On equal terms, 4 v 4 the Solars should completely and utterly mop the floor with average Dragon blooded. It shouldn't even be a contest, the Solars just have so much advantage..

Bigger Essence Pools, Bigger dice adder charms, Better Ox-Body, Better Charms overall.

By Comparison let's briefly go over some of the common 1e Solar Charms..

One Weapon two blows is a double attack against one opponent right out the gate, for only 2 essence(PG errated it down from 3). Peony Blossom is 1 extra attack up to your permanent essence for 3 motes. These are early level charms...

Dipping Swallow Defense gives you an immediate defense against any attack for 2 essence. The Dragon Blooded have nothing like it. It's a very early charm.  Five Fold Bulwark is a scene long defense, and of course Heavenly Guardian is a perfect, it's also cheaper than the Dragon blooded version 3 motes to 5.

Solar Counterattack just makes things worse when combined with a scene long defense.. Not only do they get to roll to defense against the Dragon blooded attack, but they also get a free attack on the Dragon Blooded... which if successful and kills them, negates the DB's attack entirely..

God forbid the Dragon Blooded is stupid enough to use threshing floor technique and the Solar activates "Ready in 8 directions" in response... that is a shit ton of dead dragon blooded.

Blazing Solar Bolt is an autohit on a Dragon blooded. They literally cannot defend against it in any single way.

Accuracy without Distance is also an automatic successful hit against a DB target, they have no way to negate it.

Trance of Unhesitating Speed, again 3 motes per extra attack..

Arrow Storm Technique lets a Solar hit every single target in an area in one round. If the Dragon Blooded Wyld hunt brings a contingent of 20 mortals with them. This charm will kill every single one of them in a single round. (Remember as Extras they only have 3 health levels, 9 raw damage is an automatic kill)

For 5 motes, Cascade of Cutting Terror can give a PC 20 to 26 dice for an attack (Depending on if you allow specialties to +3) against a single target. Once more, the Dragon Blooded cannot use any defenses against this. The only thing they can do is pump up their base dice pool and hope they can parry.

Blood Thirsty Sword Dancer Spirit gives +3 to all of the Exalted dice pools and lets them completely ignore all wound penalties for the scene..

Iron Skin reduces any attack made against the character to minimum damage (Typically essence) and is Compatiable with armor, which brings hardness into play and can reduce the damage to 0 then.

QuoteAnyway, that's enough with the Solar charms. There are just so many ways the Solars can no sell a Dragon Blooded attack while also turning them into a fine red mist. 1st edition Exalted fit the setting... It took hundreds of Dragon blooded and thousands of mortal troops to take down a single experienced Solar. A group of 5 Solars with 3-4 sessions under their belt, are going to steam roll 5 competent Dragon blooded.

Now if you're using a Dragon Blooded whose a Master of an elemental style... that's 12 charms and a minimum essence of 4. This is not a starting Dragon Blooded. This is a Dragon Blooded Elder. Given their charms are equivalent to Celestial level, the character is no longer fighting a typical "Dragon Blooded", they are fighting something that's almost a Celestial Exalted... they should expect a tougher fight..

But 5 Solars against 1 Master? They're going to kill that master good..

If your PC's were falling before the might of Dragon Blooded, they either made incompetent characters, or the enemies you were throwing at them had gobs more experience points than them.

This, this and one more time, this!
And the situation was much the same in 2e, and seems to be the same in 3e now.

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;900855Props for being good at the rules but, ugh! Look at that! That's fucking ridiculous! There is far too much micromanaging and bookkeeping for a GM. And Ex3 is the most intricate version, supposedly? Fuck that.

Not such a big deal after you have some experience with it - but simplifying it was one of my wishes for Ex3 that the developers didn't listen to.

Quote from: yabaziou;900869@AsenG : I am a he (actually i should write that my personal pronoms of choice are he/his/him or that I identify as a he/him/his but the Patriarchy is strong in me ! ^_^) but knowing my given name (which is Yann by the way) would not help you anyway to guess my gender since it is a name that can be given to boys and girls indifferently (same speeling and pronounciation). And, of course, me hating agreeing with you was a factious remark from me and a jab to the fact that you are one of the few users there who enjoy Ex 3, something that I glad for you given the money you have put in it !

I'm fine with you using "I'm a he". In my native language, the other thing is untranslatable, or rather, doesn't make a modicum of sense:).
(For that matter, Yan is a name here, but male and female names always have different forms. Always. Unless there are, maybe, one or two that buck the trend, but they're probably recently borrowed).

Quote from: KingCheops;900926And there's the rub.  In every single campaign I played in, except the one I ran, the GM was an absolute fucking dick about stunts.  You could give one guy a fucking essay about the awesomeness of your attack and he'd be like "here's your 1 mote stunt."  Another guy just didn't.  I had to deprogram one guy because he was slowing down my game with the essay stunts because it was total overkill.

No 2 die stunts and suddenly your combos are SUPER limited.  No stunts at all and your motes run out fast and you hit essence displays faster.  Even then a lot of stuff is not very mote efficient so stunts never really fully recover so you get ground down.

Yes I realize this is all shitty GM stuff but honestly all WW games have been shit head magnets as far as I can tell.

Yeah, but - while you could argue this is WW/OPP's fault, or the community's fault - it's not the game's fault. All that matters for the game are you, your group, and the rulebook(s) you're planning to use.
Not that all my GMs have been easy with stunts. I remember one campaign where we got a total of three 3-die stunts for a year and a half - but the GM just warned us he has stricter ideas than the default, and we agreed to roll with that. (I had a problem with his stunts, but that was because he and I had different ideas for what is an interesting stunt, and it was a fun game regardless:D).

Quote from: Alderaan Crumbs;901046In general, I can't stand having to judge players to reward them, at least when it comes to stunts. I've known/know great RPers who get tongue-tied during stunts and I refuse to penalize them for not being what WW/OPP saw/sees as worthy. Their pretentiousness is staggering when it comes to stunts...or their games in general, to be honest.

It's not just stunts that I'm light-handed with. If a player can't come up with snazzy IC dialogue, I don't penalize them because "they didn't role play". Their dice can do the talking. I don't make the player of a fighter show me his skill with a greatsword, the dice do that. If somebody's amped and uses the same stunt over and over, that's fine. The basest description is enough to make me happy.

Every GM should do as befits the group, or teach his group. Seems like you've found what works for you.
If I did the same, my players, after the training, would hit 3-die stunts way too often to fit the game's assumptions;).

Quote from: AsenRG;901051Man, Water Dragon is an equalizer. But still, not daring to attack? Even when using comboes?
Didn't nobody have a Perfect Defence+Attack Dice Adder combo, or something? Because then the DB dies, pure and simple.

None of our characters had any Combos. They were presented as entirely optional Major Special Attacks you might break out once in a combat, and extremely expensive in terms of XP, training time, and both motes and willpower, not "if you don't buy these you're an idiot" bread-and-butter abilities you were expected to use on every single attack. Seriously, it wasn't just possible but easy to spend every single XP you ever earned on buying ever more inclusive Combos. I consider the new rules on combining Charms to be one of the greatest improvements in 3e, along with the five motes per round in-combat recovery.

Quote from: Whitewings;901062None of our characters had any Combos. They were presented as entirely optional Major Special Attacks you might break out once in a combat, and extremely expensive in terms of XP, training time, and both motes and willpower, not "if you don't buy these you're an idiot" bread-and-butter abilities you were expected to use on every single attack. Seriously, it wasn't just possible but easy to spend every single XP you ever earned on buying ever more inclusive Combos. I consider the new rules on combining Charms to be one of the greatest improvements in 3e, along with the five motes per round in-combat recovery.

I think that the expectation of Exalted's staff was that each character was going to hyper focused into their chosen field.  So having a Dawn warrior that blew the entirety of their beginning charms to getting that Perfect Defense and all the little killy widgets.

Which might be how most people played it, but we never did.  And the system fucked up for it.  And god forbid you got into the combo nuttiness.

Quote from: Whitewings;901062None of our characters had any Combos. They were presented as entirely optional Major Special Attacks you might break out once in a combat, and extremely expensive in terms of XP, training time, and both motes and willpower, not "if you don't buy these you're an idiot" bread-and-butter abilities you were expected to use on every single attack. Seriously, it wasn't just possible but easy to spend every single XP you ever earned on buying ever more inclusive Combos. I consider the new rules on combining Charms to be one of the greatest improvements in 3e, along with the five motes per round in-combat recovery.

IIRC, a couple of the characters did have combos but having to use them every turn was taxing.

Quote from: Nexus;901065IIRC, a couple of the characters did have combos but having to use them every turn was taxing.

It doesn't help that Chungian play is an actual thing, and the system was designed so you needed to use it.

But who seriously thought to have a DV-penalty-negator+Perfect+anti-ambush+dice-adder into the same combo?  Until the first couple of characters got whacked?

It's like how they made Doomsday in the comics.  "We'll just get sending it out until it's immune to whatever kills it".  Hell of a design mentality.