I think thats only a problem if your client base are the sort of people who take a bunch of loosely interconnected stuff and obsessively demand that it fits into a coherent whole, so you can see where the model breaks down when it meets gamers.

I don't understand why you can't have small groups of bad guys that are challenging to players. I've been playing it for months now. It is the same thing as DnD except that everyone with character levels is in a group together, oh, and everyone is a Dusk Blade.

You can always just write up a bunch of 16 dice throwing monsters with DR of 15 and dress them anyway you want. No one playing it will know the difference.

Quote from: Ian Absentia;278841Come now.  Really?  I'll allow that they generally developed the line with this in mind (having learned a lesson or two from the World o' Darkness line), but "carefully" isn't an adverb I'd apply to the development of Exalted.

If we were talking about Exalted's system, style or themes then I'd agree, but the imminent apocalypse model is one of the few things they've been consistent with. Geoff Grabowski was pretty clear that it was how he envisioned Creation, and no one has seen fit to fuck with that. Yet.

Quote from: Cranewings;279204I don't understand why you can't have small groups of bad guys that are challenging to players. I've been playing it for months now. It is the same thing as DnD except that everyone with character levels is in a group together, oh, and everyone is a Dusk Blade.

You can always just write up a bunch of 16 dice throwing monsters with DR of 15 and dress them anyway you want. No one playing it will know the difference.

Well, presumably, because the protagonists can juggle mountains and lay waste to entire armies with naught but their armpits.

This level of power is what prompts the question of how playable the setting actually is. A bit like an X Men rpg where everyone is Onslaught or something equally world shattering.

I think the problem we found with Cranewings approach, which is what the GM ultimately ended up doing was that the many exceptions in Exalted (particularly perfects) was what led to those groups being easily trounced which was fine if canon fodder but a bit disappointing as a main opponent. To individualise them you need to consider what charms they have access to and thats a lot of work - or requires some judgement. The other problem was the disparity in characters power based on player's ability to utilise the system - obviously this applies for any game but Exalted does really reward someone who can arrange the modifiers in nice rows and tick them off. So the hardest characters were very hard and major villains could boff the weakest ones quite easily. Of course as I was oneof the weaker ones because I'm lazy at understanding systems fully and was in love with a character concept the system didn't support I take it as a weakness. YMMV.

However in terms of sustainability of setting, the apocalypse timeframe is pretty flexible. A lots happened in the past 5 years but unless you want to tweak the rules, in theory getting Solars to the higher essence levels would take centuries anyway which would be an interesting concept for a campaign. Many of the bad guys work at cross purposes to each other and its easy to imagine the players stumbling over a vast battle between Deathlords and Lunars or similar. Sure the end of the world is coming but no one knows when and as I said even if the players get massively powerful, there are still larger baddies around the corner and also a larger number - dozens of solars, akumi and abyssals who in theory would be progressing at the same rate as the PC's. Personally the limits of the system would drag the game down long before the setting could end.

Isn't the canonical end to Exalted that everyone pretty much wastes so much time time jockeying for power and blaming each other that they literally fail to stop armageddon? I personally find such a happening to be the most realistic outcome of all Exalted campaigns.

Quote from: Ghost Whistler;279254Well, presumably, because the protagonists can juggle mountains and lay waste to entire armies with naught but their armpits.

This level of power is what prompts the question of how playable the setting actually is. A bit like an X Men rpg where everyone is Onslaught or something equally world shattering.

The fluff says the characters are that powerful. They really aren't. They start out like 5th level dnd characters with reduced hitpoints and never get as bad as most dnd characters. So the question about Exhalted is the same one about dnd... how playable is the end game?

Quote from: NiallS;279263I think the problem we found with Cranewings approach, which is what the GM ultimately ended up doing was that the many exceptions in Exalted (particularly perfects) was what led to those groups being easily trounced which was fine if canon fodder but a bit disappointing as a main opponent. To individualise them you need to consider what charms they have access to and thats a lot of work - or requires some judgement. The other problem was the disparity in characters power based on player's ability to utilise the system - obviously this applies for any game but Exalted does really reward someone who can arrange the modifiers in nice rows and tick them off. So the hardest characters were very hard and major villains could boff the weakest ones quite easily. Of course as I was oneof the weaker ones because I'm lazy at understanding systems fully and was in love with a character concept the system didn't support I take it as a weakness. YMMV.

However in terms of sustainability of setting, the apocalypse timeframe is pretty flexible. A lots happened in the past 5 years but unless you want to tweak the rules, in theory getting Solars to the higher essence levels would take centuries anyway which would be an interesting concept for a campaign. Many of the bad guys work at cross purposes to each other and its easy to imagine the players stumbling over a vast battle between Deathlords and Lunars or similar. Sure the end of the world is coming but no one knows when and as I said even if the players get massively powerful, there are still larger baddies around the corner and also a larger number - dozens of solars, akumi and abyssals who in theory would be progressing at the same rate as the PC's. Personally the limits of the system would drag the game down long before the setting could end.

I hear what you re saying. For the first part anyway, I think all point based systems require a lot of GM involvement in player character creation and advancement. Our GM required that half our experiance points be spent on non-combat abilities, and half our creation points. He also helped people find things to be useful.

Quote from: Cranewings;279346The fluff says the characters are that powerful. They really aren't. They start out like 5th level dnd characters with reduced hitpoints and never get as bad as most dnd characters. So the question about Exhalted is the same one about dnd... how playable is the end game?

i never got so far as to actually play it. the rules put me right off.