A while ago I wrote about converting Dark Sun over to an Exalted-based system, and while the idea sat in my head for a while, I've since started working on it and gotten pretty far.

( Nerdery within )

I've got a game idea based on Exalted vs. the World of Darkness (which I wrote about here), and I want to write it down before I forget it.

( A three-game epic )

This would take years to run through, but I think it would be amazing.

I spent a while thinking about this at work yesterday, so I decided to write them all down. These are all the RPG games I currently want to run and have put some effort into planning. I have plenty of other "wouldn't it be fun to..." ideas, but if I haven't put any effort into it, I'll leave it out.

( A lifetime of game ideas )

I've spent a long time putting together compilation documents for Dragon-Blooded Charms, hearthstones, sorcery spells, and martial arts and putting together a (currently 76-page) bestiary for that game I wrote about two-and-a-half years ago that I'm sure I'll get around to at some point. But despite that, I was never super happy with the Dragon-Blooded mechanically.

Dragon-Blooded abilities, and the Charms associated with them, are split into the aspects, with a surcharge on any power not part of the Exalt's own aspect, and it locks out a lot of character concepts or makes them more expensive. An Air aspect archer? Nope, Archery is a Wood aspect Ability. You'd think Fire aspects make good lieutenants because they're passionate and inspiring, but War is an Earth ability, so they pay a penalty for all the Charms. Earth should be good at contemplation and planning, but Bureaucracy is a Water ability and Lore is an Air ability, so no. And so on.

A while ago, I found a document by Ekorren from the Onyx Path forums called "Dragon-Blooded Revisions, Making Terrestrials Terrestrial" that cut all this out and gave each aspect its own set of Charms. Now there were just Air Charms, which covered a huge variety of concepts. Sure, Air aspect combat is focused on range, but it's possible to play an Air aspect swordsman and use the element of Air to do it, rather than having to take Fire-aspected Melee Charms and no longer have any Air powers despite being an Air aspect. Unfortunately, it was half done, with finished Air and Earth and only a bit of Fire.

Well, I took it, modified it, added a bunch of stuff from that compilation document, and now it's done. All five aspects, each with their own Charmset. Each with more ability in that aspects' thematic strengths, but with a broad range of powers that can accommodate a wide variety of characters.

I don't know if it's balanced, and only a quarter of it is my original work. I wrote a lot of Charms here and there, but I was also building on an existing framework and I made heavy use of Charms borrowed from fanworks like Hundredfold Facets of Enlightenment (PDF) or Ever-Cascading Torrent of Glory (PDF) or conversions of A Clutch of Dragons. But it exists and it's enough to run a game on, and I'm finally happy with the way that Dragon-Blooded work.

Now, to just get a game off the ground.

Last night was the final session of the short Warlords of the Mushroom King game I ran, and almost the entire session was a battle with the Super Mario Galaxy 2 Bowser Music playing in the background. That sounds like a nightmare, but we run relatively short sessions and got a bit of a later start, to a combat with nine major characters--the protagonists and the Blossom Guard that Miyamoto had sent for against the warlock Kurome; his lieutenants, a kappa Brother of the Hammer and a mycon Cultist of the Broodmother; Kurome's summoned demons, and the surviving bandits.

The protagonists opened up the battle by sending Chi's familiar, a self-reassembling bob-omb, walking up to the group and exploding. It rolled 8 successes on seven dice, none of the bandits saw it, and so the protagonists had a huge advantage as they attacked from stealth while the bandits were in disarray. Daiju charged straight at the Brother of the Hammer while Kabocha and Miyamoto attacked the Cultist and Kaeru started carving his way through the bandits. No one got near Kurome, especially not after the demon materialized to guard him.

The Cultist went down quickly, but the Brother of the Hammer took a bit more time due to his thick armor and his Charm-enhanced toughness, but once he started hurting a bit, Miyamoto managed to wrestle his hammer away from him and hurl it into the forest. Deprived of his martial prowess--hard to be a Brother of the Hammer with no hammer--he died quickly after that. Kurome and his demon vanished before the protagonists could turn their attention to them (I'm sure they won't show up again next game!) and the remaining bandits, confronted with the death or disappearance of their leaders and the fact that a single warrior had killed a quarter of them, threw down their weapons and ran. The protagonists let them, figuring the flora would take care of them. They then returned to a heroes' welcome in the village and walked off into the sunset.

I realized there was a third demon that Kurome had under his control--a decanthrope, if you're curious--that I should have had launch itself from bandit to bandit the way it's described in that entry. I genuinely forgot about it, though.

Kurome didn't do much in the battle. He conjured an aura of fear around himself, called on the demon to defend him, and then stepped through the shadows to get away as soon as the battle turned against him. That's a bit by design, though. One of my goals was the sorcery is more broadly applicable than martial arts, but in direct combat, sorcerers have very limited options because spellcasting takes time and blasting spells are highly limited. That's why Kurome had demons to defend him, and why he left early. Maybe he could have turned the tide if he had gone on full offense and sent the demon to attack the protagonists...but that would have been a risk, and he didn't become a powerful warlock by taking risks.

Also the game was almost over, so that did influence my decision making. But only a bit. I didn't conceive of Kurome as the adventurous type.

I learned from this game that Exalted is a great gritty system where Charms and Exalted ruin everything! It worked really well, especially when I introduced the glass beads for players tracking their timing. I called out tick, everyone tosses one into the center, anyone with no beads gets to take an action. It worked really well, and the limited selection of powers meant that combat never really got bogged down. No dice pools with 30+. I think the highest number anyone rolled was 14, and that was Miyamoto disarming people. No one got hurt, so I still didn't get to test my new Medicine mechanics. But next game!

I've mentioned I always learn something from the games I finish. Here, I think I can sum what I learned down to two bullet points: 1) The Seven Samurai is a great plot and I can see why it's been ripped off so many times and 2) Exalted, at its core, is not as terrible as the internet makes it out to be, but it's a bad system for actual Exalted. At the mortal level, with dice pools from 4-12 or so, it works great.

Next Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom game starts next week!

The Attribute + Ability pairing of White Wolf games goes pretty far in figuring how to mechanically represent something. Roll Perception + Ride to inspect that horse that the merchant is trying pass off as a child of Hiparkes, roll Strength + Lore to use your time as a scribe's apprentice to figure out how to carry all those scrolls, roll Appearance + Melee to impress the comely youth with your display of martial prowess. That takes you pretty far.

But when dealing with skills that interact with other subsystems it's a bit harder, and one thing I noticed when checking up on the Medicine skill for Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom is that as written, it's basically useless unless you have huge amounts of it. Saving someone who is dying is minimum Difficulty 5, stopping bleeding or curing a crippling injury is Difficulty [the number of health levels caused by the wound], and speeding healing or treating poison is completely impossible. Treating diseases is relatively well-supported, especially using Kyeudo's disease fix, but that's less common than just purely healing wounds. This is fine for Exalted because they get Charms they can use, but I think it needs better support for mundane actions.

Here's what you can do with Medicine:

1. Diagnose Patient: As in Exalted, pg 137.
   
2. First Aid: Immediately after battle, roll Wits + Medicine. You may spend successes from this roll to turn Bashing into nothing or Lethal damage into Bashing. Each health level costs successes equal to its [wound penalty + 1], so First Aid for the -4 health level is 5 successes and for the -2 health levels is 3 successes each. This roll is Difficulty 1, modified as normal for lacking materials or adverse conditions (first aid in a swamp battlefield is much harder than a healer's tent), and may only be performed once for each set of injuries.
   
3. Treat Disease: Use Kyeudo's disease fix.
   
4. Treat Poison: Roll Intelligence + Medicine against the poison's Toxicity. If successful, neutralize a single dose of the poison. This roll may be repeated once per scene or once per interval of the poison, whichever is longer. Poisons with the L tag in Toxicity may not be treated without magic.
   
5. Long-Term Treatment: If the patient is resting and not performing any major activity, roll Intelligence + Medicine at the same treatment difficulty given in First Aid. If successful, the patient heals that health level twice as fast (i.e., at the rate an Exalt heals while performing strenuous activity; healing times reference here). This roll must be repeated for each health level.
   
6. Stabilize the Dying: Roll Wits + Medicine, Difficulty 3 + [one-half current number of Dying health levels suffered], success means the patient is stabilized at Incapacitated. You cannot perform First Aid on someone you've stabilized.

There we go. Plenty of options that allow people who focus on Medicine to make a measurable difference without shutting down anyone who doesn't use magic.

One short session, but still!

A week and a half ago was the first session of the short-run Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom game I'm running to see if all that work I poured into the system ends up with something functional or with an unworkable mess. It being based on Exalted, character creation took a while (though not as long as if the players had to pick Charms, fortunately), but in I ended up with four misfits thrown together by the vagaries of fate and the fact that I demanded reasons why the PCs all knew each other:

• Daiju: A kappa of great strength, great size, and the corresponding intelligence that point-buy system balance forces for those advantages. He doesn't have many interests beyond eating, sleeping, fighting, and a dream to challenge the Dragon Emperor to single combat, but he's currently working as a yojimbo for:
  
• Chi: A silent one from the Scarlet City, Chi is also a member of the Somnambulant Calculators, the Scarlet City's order of oneiromantic engineers. He's wandering through the Dragon Empire searching for Predecessor artifacts, after his abrasive personality and lack of concern for his fellows resulted in him being "promoted" to field agent.
  
• Miyamoto: A kong from the Kong Jungles who's spent decades wandering through Agarica, Miyamoto has built up quite a reputation for himself as a sage, warrior, and tea-brewer. According to family legend, he is a direct descendant of the last Princeps of the Kong Imperium and is seeking some way to restore his people to their long-vanished glory. He's traveling with:
  
• Kabocha: A raptok princess who met Miyamoto years ago when he passed through the Raptok Isles on his travels and eventually sought him out with the goal of making a name for herself. With the Kingdom of Flowers in turmoil, she figures it's a great place to look.

I started with the PCs all fleeing down a well-travelled road away from a Dragon Empire checkpoint, after a "misunderstanding" with the guards and a group of chuzan mercenaries resulting in a brawl, because starting in media res during a travel scene is an important part of sword and sorcery. They could tell the road was well-travelled because I took some inspiration from The Mirror Empire (link to my review) and its jungle full of carnivorous flora and imported that into Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom, so the road was burned down to bare earth for ten yards on each side to keep the dionaea and stranglevines and walking trees and gravecups from eating travellers.

After seeing a small path leading through the forest and knowing the Dragon Empire patrols were after them, they ran off into the woods, fought past a few lashvines, and made it to a small village miles into the forest, where they introduced themselves, overcame the initial misunderstandings due to their appearance--isolated Floral peasants not being used to kappa and raptok in their towns--saw a mysterious shrouded figure peering at them from one of the huts, and were told about the bandits plaguing the village, because I told the players when we started that I was basing this on Seven Samurai.

That's about all we had time for. The system went pretty well, though I admit that the basic Attribute + Ability part of Exalted isn't what people complain about and that's most of the mechanics that were invoked. The real sticking parts are usually combat and Charm usage, neither of which we got to, and I'm not going to be doing that much with the social mechanics for a short game like this. So the real test is yet to come, but so far it's going well!

I've seen several complaints about how Exalted mortals-level combat doesn't have much tactical depth, and this post springs out of my bafflement at that statement. I mean, Exalted has disarming, called shots, Fierce Blows, blocking enemies' movement, defending others, knockdown, stunning, bleeding, morale rules, etc. It doesn't have flanking by default, but playing on a grid it's easy enough to add it in (-1 external penalty to DV vs. attacks from the side, -2 external penalty vs. attacks from behind. Boom). A lot of this isn't worth keeping track of when the Exalted are chopping boulders in half and doing backflips over buildings, but it's still there.

As one example, I was originally thinking about writing up a way to include non-Charm counterattacks before I realized I didn't need to. The way to do a counterattack without magical aid is the same way you do one in real life--you wait for the attack (Guard), size up an opportunity after defending (Aim), then Attack. Since Exalted 2e combat is timing-based rather than action-based, there's no need to add a special "counterattack" action as a way to exceed the normal action limits.

One I just thought of is that hit-and-run tactics are viable. Any Lethal wound causes bleeding and possible infection, so striking from ambush, doing a little damage, and running is a great way to wound anyone who doesn't have medical training or access to healing magic. A single good hit doing two or three Health Levels of damage will causes a target to bleed into unconsciousness in ~15 minutes if it's left untreated, and then you can tie them up / finish them off at leisure.

Some of this only comes out through banning flurries, because otherwise the optimal action is always "attack as many times as your weapon's Rate allows, Gate of Babylon, win." But it's there. I wonder if people just haven't tried it out--considering all the "why would I ever play something weak and puny like a Dragon-Blood?" sentiment I see out there, that wouldn't surprise me.

This is my attempt to retool Exalted mortal-level combat into something I like a bit better and that's more suitable for people who aren't leaping all around the landscape all the time and who don't have dozens of discrete rule-breaking packages to draw on. It draws on a few ideas I've mentioned before, which I'll summarize here for the benefit of putting it all in one place rather than scattering it over a handful of different blog posts, often months in the past:

• Flurries Don't Exist: Everything has a Speed and everything is a single action. The closest to an old flurry is Double Attack, and that still takes place on separate ticks.


• Defense Is Rolled: References to DVs below always refer to the total defense value, i.e. the raw Strength + [Ability] + Defense or Dexerity + Dodge + Essence, which is rolled in response to an attack. The smaller dice pools available to mortals and the removal of flurries should make this a much more tenable option.


• Grapple Is Extensively Changed: I wrote about this before, but see below for more finalized rules.


• DVs Do Not Naturally Refresh: Combatants must take the Guard action to refresh their DVs. The intent of this is to model constant attacking leading to combatants overextending themselves and leaving themselves vulnerable, which is what stacking DV penalties on flurries used to do before I hacked them out.


• Movement Is Not Reflexive: This is more experimental than the others, but I'm going to try removing reflexive movement and requiring an action for each move.

Several of the descriptions are taken from here, though some parts have changed to account for the rules above.

Aim
(Speed 3, DV -1)
When Aiming is declared, choose a target. Aborting to attack the target adds a number of dice to the attack equal to the ticks spent aiming (max 3). Aborting to any other action gives that action a -2 internal penalty. Aiming may be maintained indefinitely.

Attack
(Varies, DV -1)
Make an attack. Speed is based on weapon type. There are several types of attacks which carry their own characteristics.

• Brutal Attack (Speed Varies, DV -1): A Brutal Attack action is identical to an Attack action, save that it has an Accuracy penalty of -1 and it increase the raw damage of the attack by three. Punch and kick are thus replaced by unarmed Attack and unarmed Brutal Attack, respectively.


• Charge Attack (Speed +1, DV -2): This combines a Move and an Attack into a single action, allowing the character to advance up to twice their Move rate and immediately make an attack at the end of it. Anyone currently taking the Guard action gains a +2 bonus to defend against a Charge Attack.


• Double Attack (Speed Varies, DV -3): A Double Attack action makes two separate attacks with the same weapon, one right after the other. The Speed of the whole action is the highest Speed of the weapons involved, though the second attack takes place one tick after the first. The first attack suffers an Accuracy penalty of -4, and the second suffers an Accuracy penalty of -8. Weapons with Rate 1 or with the 2H tag cannot be used to make a Double Attack.


• Quick Attack (Speed -1, DV -2): A Quick Attack action is identical to an Attack action, save that its DV penalty is -2, it has an Accuracy penalty of -2, and it reduces the Speed of the attack by 1.


• Thrust (Varies, DV -2): A Thrust action is identical to an Attack action, save that its DV penalty is -2 and it carries the Piercing tag.

Coordinate Attack
(Speed 5, DV -2)
When Coordination is declared, choose a target and participating allies (which may include yourself). Roll Charisma + War, difficulty (Half the number of participants, round down). Allies included usually need to Aim or Guard until your next action. During your next action, the target's suffers an external penalty to their DV equal to the number of successes rolled, to a maximum of (number of participants) against any attacks made by any participant during that tick.

Dash
(Speed 3, DV -2)
Dash allows the character to move [(Dexterity + 6) - Mobility Penalty] * 3 yards, or half that amount of hexes if using a battlemap. As a special condition of Dashing, characters cannot apply their Dodge DV while performing a Dash action.

Defend Other
(Speed 5, DV -2)
This combines the effects of Defend Other and Blockade Movement. The character may interpose their own Parry DV between an attacker and a target within the range of their weapon. If the attack misses, no further effect occurs. If the attack hits, the character may choose to suffer the hit themselves or allow the threshold successes to continue through to the target, who may also defend separately against it. In addition, the character may make a contested [(Strength or Dexterity) + Athletics] roll against anyone moving within range of their weapon. Success stops that character in their tracks, and they must Disengage to escape combat. Only melee weapons may be used for Defend Other.

Disengage
(Speed 2, DV -0)
When one character wishes to withdraw from combat without being attacked, they may make a contested [(Strength or Dexterity) + Athletics] roll against those in melee range. The character rolls only once, though anyone in range of her may oppose their roll. If any opponent beats the character's roll, they may make an Unexpected Attack against the character if they choose to Move away from combat. If none of them do, the character may move up their Move rate away without suffering attacks.

Grapple
(Speed 6, DV Special)
Make a Grapple roll [(Strength or Dexterity) + Martial Arts] as an attack with Speed 6, Acc +0 and Rate 1. If it hits, the character gains a number of clinch points (CP) equal to the threshold successes. Clinch points do the following:

• Reduce the target's DV by the total CP.


• Reduce the target's effective Strength + Athletics for Feats of Strength by the total CP.


• If CP reduce the target's DV and Feats of Strength score to zero, the target may not move or defend and can only attempt to break free of the clinch.


• If CP exceed the target's Stamina, the attacker may throw them up to [Strength] yards away. The target checks for knockdown.


• CP may be converted at a one-for-one ratio to dice of Bashing damage, which is treated as a Step 8 damage calculation. This damage is Piercing, and each die of Bashing damage reduces the amount of CP on the target by 1.

The character who is clinched may roll [(Strength or Dexterity) + Martial Arts] against the current CP total, with each success reducing it by one. Multiple characters may attempt to clinch the same target simultaneously, and add their CP together to determine its effects.

Guard
(Speed 3, DV Special)
Guard resets the character's Defense back to maximum. A Guarding character may abort to another action on any tick after the first, but may otherwise maintain this action indefinitely. In addition, they may make appropriate social attacks (calls for surrender, attempts to intimidate, etc.) while Guarding.

Miscellaneous Action
(Speed 5, Varies)
This is the term for any number of combat actions that don't fall into the other categories, like standing up from being prone, drinking a potion, picking up a dropped weapon, and so on.

Move
(Speed 2, -0 DV)
The character moves [Dexterity - Mobility Penalty] * 2 yards, or half that amount of hexes. The Mobility Penalty cannot reduce the character's effective Dexterity to less than one for the purposes of calculating Move distance.


The intent of this is to establish interesting tactical choices in the absence of the Charms that usually carry that responsibility in Exalted, but it's entirely possible that this will make combat a hell of confusion and annoyance. I'm most worried about the removal of reflexive movement, and I might end up reintroducing move-per-tick but keep it at the minimum of 2 yards per tick--I won't prevaricate, it's basically reinventing the Five-Foot Step. But as long as I don't have a giant chart of Attacks of Opportunity, I should be okay.

I'm inspired a bit by the guy at Dungeon Fantastic who's running a dungeon crawl game using GURPS, which is much more on the level of game systems I find interesting even if I wouldn't want to use it specifically. And that does rely on the players, too. It's entirely possible that this system will work and hang together and be consistent but the players won't like it, which makes it pointless. It needs more playtesting, is what I'm saying.

One thing I noticed in my Warlords of the Mushroom Kingdom combat test was the huge movement rates. Moving every tick does keep people engaged and allow for some interesting strategy, but it also slows combat down a lot and requires a large area griddedhexed out, especially if one of the combatants has a ranged weapon and faster movement speed. So I thought, what if I added a cost to movement?

Keep the same overall move distance per tick, but make Move a Speed 2, DV -0 action, so each Move action moves (Dexterity - Mobility Penalty) * 2 yards, and then each Dash action moves (Dexterity + 6 - Mobility Penalty) * 3 yards. I already made each hex two yards across, so the average soldier in armor will be moving one hex per movement action, or 10 hexes per Dash action. Dash has its own DV penalty and prevents any parrying at all without a stunt, and since mortals rely on parrying due to Mobility Penalties to Dodge caused by armor, Dashing probably won't be common other than in the beginning or near the end.

I'd need to end up adjudicating edge cases so there aren't any situations where leapfrogging movement prevents people who should be next to each other from actually attacking, but that probably fits under the spot ruling I made for Attacks of Opportunity for people disengaging from combat--Dexterity + Dodge (-Mobility Penalty) vs. Wits + Melee, if the defender wins they withdraw safely, if the attacker wins they get a free attack against DV 0. In a blind rout, I'd go straight for the attack and avoid the roll-off.

This is partially inspired by buying some glass beads, since I can use those to count ticks. Every time anyone does an action, draw a number of beads equal to its Speed. Every tick, toss one back in the pot. On the tick a character tosses the last one in, they act. Repeat as necessary. It could be really fiddly and annoying, but it could also offer a nice tactical feel for combat.

It's also inspired by old Action Point CRPG combat systems, which Exalted is pretty close to already.

None of this is a consideration in any game that actually has Exalted in it, because when Monkey Leap Technique and Instinct-Driven Beast Movement come into play there's no point in tracking movement on a grid at all. There's a reason Exalted 3e is going to FATE-style Zones instead of tracking movement by the yard, after all. And it's not necessary in a lot of battles where exact position at the degree the game supports isn't super important, like one-on-one duels. But for a game where the combatants aren't jumping all around the map all the time, I think this has a lot of potential.

This might call for more testing!