Dice The Fajadi Affair of Descending Fire RY 768 (Exalted 3e Dragon-Blooded) (OOC)

[Esbilon]

Added a bit more background, tweaked a bit more and added Evocations for my Artifact weapons. Let me know if you have feedback on them

 

[Rykon]

magnificentmomo would I be allowed to use XP to "purchase" the deeds to the linked manses of my hearthstones sometime after the start of play?

EDIT: Mechanically this would be buying a merit dot each time and convert the merit to manse to reflect ownership of demesne and hearthstone. The character would see it as important when it comes to his children inheriting his stuff over his birth house claiming it.

 

[magnificentmomo]

Rykon yeah, you can buy it up as a Purchased merit, and we can work through as much RP as needed for that.

Speaking of RP, when time and inspiration have allowed I am still working on our opening scenario. Not enough for a separate #Lore thread just yet, but wanted to give you guys a taste of what's up.

I found the below as an evocative in game depiction/map of Fajad. While the realm preview describes the Needle as being in the center of the city, I found the below and liked the idea that Fajad spanned a couple peninsula's and islands as it's blue water harbor, and this depiction had a tower like structure on a smaller embankment. Not everyone would be super keen on literally living in the shadows of an inscrutable sorcerer's tower, and people may be weirded out by a Behemoth mine, so I see them being on the far bank, somewhat segregated from the regular practices of the city. Also, since Aqadar isn't specifically called out as being Abhari, I can see him also being at odds, and having a strained relationship with the creed and government, but since they have a somewhat symbiotic relationship, it works.


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[Esbilon]

magnificentmomo (and the rest of you) How do you feel about awarding bonus points rather than experience points for IC accomplishments? I personally feel that the difference in how bp and xp is spent pressures me to twink my stats at chargen rather more than I really like, but if this difference is taken away I'm liberated, such as it is.

Obviously to keep things balanced, less bp would be awarded than xp, but if it's the same for everyone, it should still be balanced.

 

[magnificentmomo]

I've heard the cases for it, and understand it, although with DBs it then penalizes a few other things that cost more BP than XP IIRC from some of the chatter during release (I'd have to review the DB XP/BP tables to confirm.) I'm ambivalent on the matter personally.

I'd like to hear everyone else's thoughts on it though. Is there a way to thread @?

I had also heard the the Storypath games (at least Scion 2e) mitigated the XP/BP disparity by allowing the players to shuffle a dot every session (I'd need to reread Neall's comments on it, and actually read that rule to confirm. I didn't complete my readthrough of the new Scion books yet, because Trinity came out at about the same time, and was shiny, and then WFHW came out and was shinier.)

 

[Esbilon]

Sherwood Psychie Rykon Epiphany Just write @ and their username

 

[magnificentmomo]

#effort

 

[Rykon]

So when we first ran 3E with my local group, and when I tried running it I always tried to merge XP and BP into one structure. However, the easiest solution to sell to my GM was converting BP to XP based on the Willpower cost. since 2 BP got a willpower dot, and 8 xp got a willpower dot, we did 4x BP with the XP cost table.

I come from a statistics/math heavy background so this disparity has always been aggravating to my slight OCD. So if y'all wanna house rule it one way or another, I'd be fine with it.

 

[Esbilon]

While I agree that using xp in chargen is better than bp as experience, it's much more complicated, and not everyone comes from a math-heavy background, which is why I suggested the other

 

[Rykon]

Oh I'm not married to that solution, it's just an example of what we did. I rather like the BP structure cause it removes the cost bias toward min-maxy trait spreads and promotes skill/attribute growth over time naturally without feeling punishing.

I also find it better represents the difference in benefit between charms and dots (at least it did in 2E, 3E's are a lot more constrained and situational).

 

[Psychie]

Don't we get two different kinds of points as it is? There is the regular xp and the Dragon xp, right? Between the two, we should be ok point-wise.

 

[Esbilon]

It's not about the amount, it's about how they're spent. As it is now, 3 bp can get me either the 2nd dot of Strenght, or the 5th dot of Dexterity, but were I to buy them with xp, the price would be 4 and 16 respectively. That kind of disparity creates incentives in character generation that I really don't like.

 

[Psychie]

Ah, I see what you mean now.

 

[Rykon]

For what it's worth, I'm in favor of using the BP table for XP, even if there's a couple adjustments.

 

[Epiphany]

Whew. Rough draft posted. Still need to work out artifacts, hearthstone(s) and Charms. Sorry for being so slow, but haven't made a 3e character before.

As for xp vs. bonus points, I'm totally fine with gaining bonus points in play instead of xp. It would certainly encourage me to min/max somewhat less. I'm good either way, though.

 

[Rykon]

Got my hands on Arms of the Chosen finally as I started work on write-ups. Realized I needed a theme split when I considered evocation caps on artifacts. Also felt inspired when I read the effects channeled by different materials and now I have to take a 3 dot artifact for this.

For Crashing Sky though, still having a lot of block with crunch, especially after encountering the evocations cannot affect aura mandate in WFHW though the heirlooms have some odd line-walking examples of aura related evocations.

 

[Rykon]

Update: As long as magnificentmomo approves. I have basic write-ups for both artifacts and converted both hearthstone merits to manses in the point shuffle. Now that I've seen what's in arms of the chosen in some detail, I think the new choice in hearthstones is a marked improvement for the character.

I am really excited for this game, as each character seems extremely cool. Can't wait to see how it plays out.

 

[Sherwood]

I went ahead and added more Intimacies and expanded my Background a bit. Still excited for the game.

 

[magnificentmomo]

So, saw a number of you have a specialty rating higher than 1, and that isn't how they work in 3e. You just get one dot per specialty, but you can have as many specialties as you like for an ability. Easy mistake with some of the tiny little changes from edition to edition.

Rykon i'll give the them a more detailed look later, but at first blush they look alright.

I'm going to jinx it again and say I should have an opening post in the next couple days. I'm excited too. I've been coming up with the supporting cast for this area based off the fantastic group you all have provided, and can't wait for you all to see them, or not see them in some cases...

 

[Esbilon]

So, saw a number of you have a specialty rating higher than 1, and that isn't how they work in 3e. You just get one dot per specialty, but you can have as many specialties as you like for an ability. Easy mistake with some of the tiny little changes from edition to edition.

Right. Old habits die hard, I guess

 

[magnificentmomo]

Since it has the least amount of ripple effects (needing to figure out how much BP to charge for workings, what should 2xp charm costs become, etc), and since the main offender is the scaling traits, I propose the below two options.

Any scaling cost becomes "dot's purchased" instead of "current rating". So, buying up from 4 to 5 costs the same as if you had bought it up from 1 to 2.

Scaling xp costs are eliminated for a TBD flat amount.

Preferences?

 

[Esbilon]

Since Charms are, as a rule, the main thing people want to spend XP on, I suggest that the xp cost for scaling values follows that, or is a little cheaper. Charms cost twice as many xp as bp, meaning that raising an Attribute would cost 8 xp flat (possibly 6 xp flat for tertiary), and Abilities 2 xp for Favored, and 4 xp for non-favored (alternatively 3 xp for either).

At least that's my suggestion while pretty tired.

 

[Psychie]

Not to throw a wrench in everyone's plans, but it does seem to me that raising an attribute or skill from 4 to 5 should be harder than raising it from 2 to 3. While I like the idea of a fixed cost for all, considering the costs of what I want to do, but it is something I felt I had to bring up.

 

[Esbilon]

Not to throw a wrench in everyone's plans, but it does seem to me that raising an attribute or skill from 4 to 5 should be harder than raising it from 2 to 3. While I like the idea of a fixed cost for all, considering the costs of what I want to do, but it is something I felt I had to bring up.

I fundamentally agree, however I think it is more important to use basically the same system for character creation and advancement. It is possible to create characters from scratch with xp costs (give everyone a blank sheet and 300 xp), but it's much more work and everyone would have to start over.

 

[magnificentmomo]

Yeah, it is a complicated issue. I don't necessarily find a xp/bp divide inherently wrong; I understand the reasoning for it, facilitating ease of character realization while also incentivizing certain purchases for chargen. The negative impact of it being a kind of opportunity cost is really compounded with xp tables scaling. It's okay if someone wants to pay a little extra for something out of chargen because they really want it now, but when that decision has the ripple effect of actually costing hundreds of XP, it is too much.

Gut feeling yeah the 5th dot should cost more, but it should be worth what it costs. With ability based exalts you can justify that it isn't just .5 more successes on average, it also unlocks the ability to buy a whole new tier of charms. Harder to justify that on Attributes, unless you are a Lunar, Alchemical, or Liminal (or some crazy Exigent). Yeah, it applies to more situations, but it really isn't all that sexy.

"Dots purchased" based scaling can almost have the opposite effect that regular scaling does. Instead of providing incentive to have a 5 in anything you care about, it pushes you to have 3 or 4 in as much as possible. Which has it's appeal.

Joke answer, the only way to know that you aren't accidentally wasting even a single XP, is XP character creation with no gimmes at all. No starting ability spreads, no choose ten 15 charms, just a completely blank character sheet and a big pile of xp, which kinda sounds awful.