I've really just started reading but so far its been largely what I suspected: Storyteller with some new gloss and additional (and IMO, unneeded complexity).

The Withering vs Decisive damage feels allot like Hit Point/Wounds systems use in other games. Not a bad solution. The changes to character generation have been floating around for years but I guess its good they've finally implemented them.

There's allot of new jargon and things to memorize and Initiative seems likes it going to be a bitch to handle in play especially across multiple party battles. The power scale seems to have tipped down as mentioned. That's a negative for me.

Yeah still not making me want to buy it.

The issue I had with the errata that was done for 2e, which was done by much the same group as that designing 3e, is that though the mechanics were often sound, they were strangled with even more jargon, resource management and moving parts. So much so, that even though it worked better with someone who had a good understanding of Exalted mechanics and took a lot of enjoyment from them, it was even more impenetrable and unwieldy than the un-errated system to everyone else.

I expected 3e would be much the same and it sounds like that this is the case.

Quote from: Skywalker;784528The issue I had with the errata that was done for 2e, which was done by much the same group as that designing 3e, is that though the mechanics were often sound, they were strangled with even more jargon, resource management and moving parts. So much so, that even though it worked better with someone who had a good understanding of Exalted mechanics and took a lot of enjoyment from them, it was even more impenetrable and unwieldy than the un-errated system to everyone else.

I expected 3e would be much the same and it sounds like that this is the case.

Keeping in mind this material is not in its final form Some of charms are pretty dense mechanically with several exceptions and special cases. Some offer rerolls as long as 10 comes, some change the TN for double success, some reset once a day or when the character does something specific, some charms can use Initiative instead of Essence, some generate their own mote pools or have different uses depending on if they're use in a Withering or Decisive Attack, that sort of thing.

Anybody not an Exalted fan who wants to check it out?

Anybody want an easy system for Exalted?

Check this out...EXALTED QUICKSTART

Here's a REVIEW of the Quickstart

I really enjoy the Exalted setting. I have never been able to handle the complexity of either 1e or 2e in actual play. I didn't enjoy the mountains of dice and the mechanics which TO ME took me away from the setting which I thought rocked hard.

Enter the Quickstart - super easy rules and a huge amount of setting content. I've run two short arc campaigns and a dozen one-shots using the quickstart and they've been super awesome fun.

Some things have been simplified, Weapons are broken down into Light, Medium and Heavy (mundane and Artifact). Armor is handled similarly. Special distinctions between weapons are handled with Tags that denote individual properties a particular weapon might have.

Quote from: Nexus;784549Some things have been simplified, Weapons are broken down into Light, Medium and Heavy (mundane and Artifact). Armor is handled similarly. Special distinctions between weapons are handled with Tags that denote individual properties a particular weapon might have.

IMO that's the wrong stuff to simplify. Exalted was cool for having big lists of stuff to choose from. What needed to be simplified was the core systems, resource management and Charm mechanics.

Quote from: Spinachcat;784545Enter the Quickstart - super easy rules and a huge amount of setting content. I've run two short arc campaigns and a dozen one-shots using the quickstart and they've been super awesome fun.

As a quickstart, its one of the best. But there are some issue with it if you play with it for any length of time. There was a project called Quixalted that used the Quickstart as a base and expanded on it quite well.

For me, I still like 1e. It had a few flaws, mainly over the number of dice rolled (no longer an issue in a time of dice rollers) but they were pretty minor in hindsight and the system was considerably less dense than in 2e. The core system of Attribute + Ability was king and dice adding charms were rare outside of combat, using more flavourful effects instead.

I found that 1e could have been simplified easily and significantly through 3 main changes - static defence (sort of like 2e but without all the attached complexity), no rolling for NPCs and a universal mental defence mechanic. This would have no impact on the material as written too.

Movement has been abstracted into range bands, at least in combat that effect what weapons you can use and possible Actions you can perform. It reminded me of the why Fight! handles movement but I'm sure there's other games that do it in similar fashion.

I did like some of the changes to Character generation like ditching "Caste Abilities' for a more flexible method where you can pick your Caste Abilities from a list.

Quote from: Nexus;784571Movement has been abstracted into range bands, at least in combat that effect what weapons you can use and possible Actions you can perform. It reminded me of the why Fight! handles movement but I'm sure there's other games that do it in similar fashion.

I did like some of the changes to Character generation like ditching "Caste Abilities' for a more flexible method where you can pick your Caste Abilities from a list.

Zones sound good, though generally fudging distances will still likely be my preferred option.

Not sure I like choosing Caste Abilities. They were never very restrictive and Exalted doesn't need more options in PC creation IMO

Quote from: Skywalker;784572Zones sound good, though generally fudging distances will still likely be my preferred option.

Not sure I like choosing Caste Abilities. They were never very restrictive and Exalted doesn't need more options in PC creation IMO

 You pick five your caste abilities. I think it handles the issues with Dawns having all the direct combat abilities as caste but needing a few of the others (Awareness, Dodge, etc) to be well rounded fighters.

Quote from: Nexus;784573You pick five your caste abilities. I think it handles the issues with Dawns having all the direct combat abilities as caste but needing a few of the others (Awareness, Dodge, etc) to be well rounded fighters.

Its an example of a typical "Scroll Monkey" fix. There was an issue with one Caste's caste abilities. So every player must now pick their caste abilities. It deals with the issue, but adds more for every player to do, including those players that would not have had an issue to begin with. Its OK when you look at each such fix individually, but they soon snowball over the entire system.

Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of some of the things the 3e team have done. I just hope that we see much less "fixes" like this and more system-wide design work that makes such fixes unnecessary, and make Exalted easier and fun to play.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;784462I've already got marshmellows stockpiled, so I can enjoy the flame wars between the blind fanbois and everyone else the way God intended.

With how passionately fans to the game or more accurately their vision of the game yeah I bet there's going to some truly epic flame fests when the book drops. There's already a tendency to treat anyone that doesn't fawn over what's been said about as either an idiot or heretic.

Quote from: Snowman0147;784527Yeah still not making me want to buy it.

I'm still willing to give the finished product a look, see what its like after they've polished it up, kicked the tires and everything. I'm not holding my breath about liking it though. Too much choices that are counter to what I wanted some of which are hardwired into the game system at this point. I can't begrudge the developers for aiming for a certain target market but I don't think I'm among it.

The new anima abilities still seem a little uneven in usefulness but maybe that evens out in play. Any thoughts?

Quote from: Nexus;784648The new anima abilities still seem a little uneven in usefulness but maybe that evens out in play. Any thoughts?

Overall I like them. Dawns get an anima banner that actually makes them top dogs in combat instead of being outshone by twilights, rewarding them for being as aggressive as possible.

Zeniths, surprisingly, have hands down the best and most flavorful anima, especially the whole thing where they can deliberately look for trouble.

Twilights are odd. They get a very wonky and strange powerset, with the ability to bind spirits as familiars being the most outright 'sorcerous' thing about them.

Nights and Eclipses are basically unchanged beyond have their rules simplified, which makes sense as they have hands down the best anima.

Overall I'm in favor of the game: playing with the rules, I never really ran into issues like paranoia combat or "perfect or splat." I'm curious how the other splats will be handled, given how toned down the Solars are.