Should I Into Exalted?

Exalted is okay.

>>53575652
You hear it's crazy complicated, and you hear correct. No matter what edition you play, the rules are much more trouble than they're worth and laid out in a way that makes them especially impenetrable. (My greatest pet peeve with the layout is how the description of every charm begins with one to three sentences of meaningless fluff amounting to "the Lawgivers are good at ability X" before telling you what the charm actually does.) Trap options are more plentiful than in any D&D game. All in all, Exalted takes a very fun-sounding premise (Dragonball Z in a wuxia setting where everyone is world-shatteringly powerful at character creation) and miraculously makes it un-fun.

Honestly, if the setting and premise appeal to you, then run it in some kind of generic system.

>>53576164
Hmm... how hard would it be, mechanically, to adapt to d20?

>>53576287
That wouldn't be as good of a choice compared to Savage Worlds or FATE of GURPS or even Mutants & Masterminds, but it would kind of work. Just play D&D, start everyone at level 10-15, and change the appearance and names of most things. Have PCs and other Exalts be the only characters for whom some of the weirder rules of D&D apply (fully healing all wounds in one night, having so much HP that a normal armed man cannot seriously hurt you in one hit.)

>>53576375
d20 is what I'm most familiar with, but I'd be up to try other systems. I had a hell of a game back in high school with a homebrew system our DM made up, f'rinstance.

Which system would fit best?

>>53576164
Exalted's fluff is only meaningless if you are clueless about the setting. Lots of it (in the better written charms) gives use edge-cases and examples and hints about off-kilter interpretations of the following crunch text.

Borgstromancy is real, and ripping it away in 3E literally ripped away half of what made Exalted Exalted.

>>53576727
Describing weird corner cases for how to apply charms would be one thing (and preferably something to be relegated to the *end* of a charm description rather than the *beginning.* But most charm descriptions don't even do that. Pick a random charm and read the flavor text. Odds are it will be something useless like "Solars are good at X" rather than something helpful like "by the way, you can use this charm to do X" or something in-universe like "this charm was used by this famous person to do X."

>>53576495
If you want to focus on the story, I guess FATE. If you want to get a little bit deeper into the mechanics of exactly how the characters are doing the impossible, maybe Mutants & Masterminds. There you can have the full range of ridiculous powers from super-speed to mind control, but reduced to the roll of a single die rather than ten.

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>>53576164
>Trap options are more plentiful than in any D&D game.
Had me going up till there. 7/10 though.

>>53575652
I'd say give it a shot, but only third edition. First edition had the problem of all early white wolf games in that it had a combat system and not much more, and second edition was just broken all over the place.
Third edition works and works well, but is coming out pretty slow. You have solars and basically nothing else right now, but apparently DB's should be soon(tm)

>>53577964
All my reference stuff is 2e pdfs acquired through COMPLETELY LEGAL MEANS. I think I have all of them, though, even that creeper-level NSFW splat.

>>53578099
You can see the OP in >>53564893 for the other books.

>>53577964
3e has problems of its own. There's no more counting ticks, which is good, and it's less like rocket tag, which is a mixed blessing, but it's still stupidly complicated and overengineered for the task it has to perform. Not fun.

>>53578247
But I like that.

>>53578247
It's not perfect I'll fully admit, but I'm not sure I see stupidly complicated anywhere in it save maybe craft. The majority of the game is just Attribute + Ability vs Difficulty.

>>53577816
It's an exaggeration, but not much of one. There are onviously useless options (focusing in an ability that never comes up or an ability with few or no high-essence charms written for it, very long and deep charm trees for things that players will never want to do, like the 20 Socialize charms that let you change your own personality) and more subtly useless options that require you to be familiar with how combat works in practice and how things compare to each other.

>>53578222
Ah, nice. I'll grab that and start a-readin'.

Also, anyone interested in critiquing my character concepts? I tried to stay generic enough that I could fit one or both into any kind of campaign, while still allowing for more detailed backstory and personalities. Again, never played Exalted before, so I'm just going off of 2e fluff for most things.

>>53578321
>focusing in an ability that never comes up
The only skill that comes to mind is sail if you're not playing in an area with water, and even then you can just ask the ST if it will be relvent.
>an ability with few or no high-essence charms written for it
Not really no. Essence 1-3 is still where the majority of the awesome things you could ever want to do with an ability lie. Essence 4 and 5 charms are usually just singular high power affects that you can do without.
>very long and deep charm trees for things that players will never want to do
Again, that's a group issue not a system one. Why do you just assume that no one is going to be able to transform into a completely different person, and why can't people who don't just not take those charms?
>and more subtly useless options that require you to be familiar with how combat works in practice and how things compare to each other.
Are you honestly saying that a system asking you to understand how it works is a bad thing?

>>53578472
>ivory tower game design is only bad when D&D does it
Suuuuure

Don’t Twilights actually make better fighters than Dawns?

>>53579050
In 2e yeah. Dawns had 2 redundant caste abilities, and HAD to take up at least 2 of their favored abilities with defense + awareness.

>>53579050
>>53579125
In 3e, this is much less so. every cast now has their choice of cast abilities they can pick, and you pick one of your cast abilities to be a supernal. Which means that you can learn charms in that ability as if your essence was 5.

>>53579247
However, there's also more sorcery in the core book that you can actually use in a fight in 3e. It's not just butterflies everywhere.

>>53575652
It's not really all that complicated or crazy, and once you've played a couple of sessions you'll get the feel for it.

At least it's worth trying and checking out. You shouldn't just stick with one or two familiar systems. There's lots of good games out there and if you don't ever look or try to find them, you could end up missing out on something you would have otherwise really enjoyed.

>>53578321
>focusing in an ability that never comes up

That really shouldn't ever be an issue. Exalted is written with the understanding that the ST and players work together when creating the game.

>Player: Hey, I want to make a badass socializer who can schmooze his way to the top of an organization. I want to focus on getting control of a kingdom or empire.

>ST: Oh, actually this game is probably going to focus on your players delving into old First Age ruins. Socialize isn't something that will come up very much.

>Player: Okay, thanks for the heads up.

Problem avoided. But yeah, if the ST designs his campaign in a vacuum and the players make their characters without consulting with the ST, then problems will crop up. But you're liking to see something similar happen in any RPG.

>>53580678
I've been playing with my current group for a few years now, and we just wrapped up a 3.5 campaign with heavy houseruling. We're debating what kind of game to play for our next campaign, because we all want to try something different from D&D and our DM has run several single-session adventures of various systems. I missed the Exalted session, but everyone said it was really fun.

The two systems currently up for vote are Exalted and Legend. I was there for the Legend session, and it was great hack-and-slash, but little story. According the the group, the Exalted session was a great blend of action and story. We're finalizing our vote next weekend.

>>53580980
That and the balls-crazy action are why I wanna give Exalted a go. I always have big, detailed backstories for all my characters that incorporate a lot of the setting's lore as much as possible, because I wanna tell a kick-ass story in addition to punching kobolds in the face (I always play Monk).

>>53581259
Give Exalted a shot. The setting is really good, lots of interesting stuff and plenty of cool material for you to work characters around. The mechanics will seem a bit intimidating at first, but you can pick them up pretty quickly.

If you're looking to make a hand to hand fighter, Exalted has a heavy focus on various Martial Arts styles, but Brawl (just good old fisticuffs) is also an excellent method for fighting.

>>53581459
Yeah, my Dawn Caste concept was a guy who's balls at social combat or using weapons, but punches shit real good and can throw ANYTHING. Smashfists and god-kicking boots, silken armor, eventually his First Age incarnation's power armor.

Fuck, I'm nodding off. Back in about 10 hours.

>>53578632
>not knowing what ivory tower game design is and misusing the term

Stop.