Contest of Afarre

[Carthrat]

Dear Sir/Madam

You are cordially invited to take place in a contest of arms, starting on the 27th of December, 1650.

You have been selected by virtue of your skill and valor; only the finest warriors of the world have been invited to this contest, and you should feel proud that you have been numbered amongst them. To enter the tournament is at no cost to you; being willing to risk your life is payment enough!

For this is not a childs contest, where your lives are protected by foolish rules. This is a contest of violence and force, in which the first to subdue his opponent- by any means- will be declared the victor. However, it would be foolish to expect you to put your lives at stake without a suitable reward.

I can offer you that reward. Should you defeat all your opponents, and become known as the greatest warrior of the land, you shall have a gift deserving of your station. It is within my power to grant a single wish to the victor of this tournament. Anything could be yours; power to shape the world as you choose. The heart of one you love. Fame. Fortune. If you are victorious, you will need but speak, and I will make it so.

If you are willing to fight for your dream, whatever it may be- press your fingerprint into the wax at the end of this letter.

The tournament will last five days. If you are willing to come, I will know, and I will bring you to my home, where the fighting will be done. If you decide to compete, all things will be catered for you; you need not worry about bringing your own food or the like. If you, for whatever reason, lack a weapon, I can provide you with one. But I understand that you will likely wish to bring your own. The tournament will consist of a series of duels. Should you lose, yet survive, you will be instantly sent back to whence you came.

I look forward to seeing you compete. May luck favour you.

                                                          -Afarre

Welcome to the tournament!

This is a game of supernatural martial artists battling each other for their personal prize; a wish. Anything they could want. Given the chance, who *wouldn't* leap for such an  opportunity?

You are, of course, one of the aforementioned martial artists. You pressed your finger against the seal, and have thus signed yourself up into the tournament. This message was addressed to you. Even if you are illiterate, you were still able to read this message. If you thought it was a joke and pushed the seal anyway, then you have haplessly stumbled into the the game by mistake. Nonetheless, once there, you must fight. You may not wish to kill your opponent- but being a seasoned warrior, you know that a fair share of your fellow fighters may not share your opinion.

You can come from anywhere, and be any sort of fighter you can think of. Knight? Sure. Nomadic scimitar-wielder? Fine. Ninja master? Cool. Sorcerer-swordsman? Deal. The world is a supernatural version of our own, where such things are possible. All that is required is that your primary occupation is combat, and that you're good at it.

When designing your character, I actually demand a backstory of some kind. Rivals, old mentors, memories of your home, where you trained, places you've been- it'd be cool if you listed them, as well as what wish your character would make- if he knows at all. Feel free to develop join backgrounds with others who are playing, either as friends or rivals.

At the beginning of the game, you will find yourself inside the home of the mysterious Afarre. While you aren't fighting your duels (you will fight one for each of the five days of the tournament), you will spend your time exploring and wandering the environs of the place. Naturally, it wouldn't be a supernatural martial-arts tournament without a mysterious backplot occuring- and his home is where that will be revealed. You can take as great or as little a part in exploring as you like. The only requisite for playing this game is that you are able to make your fight. I'm hoping to have one or two weeks of real-time = one day of game time.

<->

Your characters will be built as Exalted characters. The reason for this is that there are many, many, many choices you can make with character design, allowing you to craft a character who fights a certain way. As all of you will be designing heavily combat-oriented characters, serious imbalance should be avoided. The main hurdle between a bad character and a good character will be, of course, understanding the rules. As I hope to start around mid December-early January, though, you should have plenty of time to learn the details, and I'm happy to help you in that regard.

I'm hoping for around 6-8 players. Tell your friends! Bring your parents! It's all good. I'll detail rules for character generation and the like later. You'll probably want a copy of the Exalted Core Rulebook and the Players Guide at least. Other books contain different styles of fighting, which I will be happy to dole out at will.

[Dracos]

Neat, I'd join if I wasn't overwhelmed as it stands.

Dracos

[Kwokinator]

I've called dibs on a spot in IRC, but Rat will probably be a bitch and ditch me if he gets more players than, say, 6-8 >_<

[Bjorn]

Very tempting, but unfortunately I know nothing of Exalted, and probably don't have the time to learn it.

[Merc]

Tentative reserved spot for me, since your planned start is still like 2-3 months away and I'll probably want more details too. Still, currently reading through the exalted book though.

[Carthrat]

The Basic Rules

This is intended as a quick-and-dirty guide to how stuff works in Exalted. It's very basic, because it doesn't include charms or sorcery. This is as bland as combat can get. You really do need to get the core book (and the players guide, though I might just type out all the errata), but this will do for starters.


<-The Basic Dice Thing->

When you roll dice, you roll whatever number of dice is appropriate (usually the rating of an attribute + the rating of an ability), and count the number of times you get 7 or higher. If you roll a 10, that counts for *two* successes.

<-Characters->

1. Attributes

Characters have 9 attributes, divided into three groups; Physical, Mental, and Social. All attributes are rated from 1-5.

The Physical Group consists of

Strength (Is added to the damage of your melee attacks.)
Dexterity (Is added to your attempts to hit, parries, dodges and initiative.)
Stamina (Determines your base damage soak amount, is uses to resist various effects.)

Unless you're doing something strange, the physical group is probably your highest group.

The Mental Group consists of

Intelligence (Aids Brainpower!)
Wits (How *fast* you think. Also used to determine initiative.)
Perception (Used to spot things. Useful in all sorts of non-direct-combat ways.)

The Mental Group is typically used if you want to fling spells around. It also has a few other useful applications, but little to do with direct combat.

The Social Group consists of

Charisma (How Likable you are!)
Manipulation (How good you are at making people do what you want, by any means.)
Appearance (How willing people are to sleep with you.)

The Social Group will come into play in most social interactions, oddly enough. This will mainly apply between combat, when you're wandering around the house.

2. Abilities

Abilities are skills. They have scores from 0-5. There are 25 skills in Exalted, some of which will come into play, and some of which will likely not. Behold the following complete list.

Archery (Shooting things with bows.)
Brawl (Punching, Kicking, Grappling, brass knuckles.)
Martial Arts (A 'catch-all' group. You use the weapons that your martial arts school allows.)
Melee (Swords'n'Spears.)
Thrown (Chakrams, Knives, crude bombs.)

Endurance (Absorbing Pain and, well, enduring. Useful for beserkers and people who want more health levels.)
Performance (Performing! If you play the flute or recite poetry...)
Presence (How powerful your force of personality is. Applies to leadership and intimidation.)
Resistence (Resisting Pain. This skill will enable you to increase your damage soak.)
Survival (Surviving in the wilds, urban, polar, or whatever.)

Craft (Building stuff. You need to pick a particular group of things to craft; architecture, weapons etc.)
Investigation (Investigating crimes, events, and libraries, oddly enough.)
Medicine (Fixing people that are broken. You may want a few levels in this, but you won't need to go overboard.)
Lore (Knowing secular stuff like maths, history, theology, myths, old stories. You need a dot in this to read.)
Occult (Knowing stuff about spirits, magic, demons et al. Lore and Occult have a fair bit of overlap.)

Awareness (Using your senses to sense stuff, even when you're not paying attention.)
Athletics (Jumping, Swimming, Running, Lifting! If you want to bounce around, this is the one.)
Dodge (The fine art of not getting hit.)
Larceny (Pickpocketing, knowing stuff about criminology, poisoning, etc.)
Stealth (The finer art of not being seen.)

Bureaucracy (How good you are at cutting and setting up red tape.)
Linguistics (How well-spoken you are. You don't need this to talk to the other fighters. In fact, you hardly need it at all.)
Ride (Riding a horse. You *may* get to bring a horse with you.)
Sail (Sailing a boat. Of limited use. >_>)
Socialize (Chatting to people to get information, to make them like you more, or to seduce them.)

You can also specialize in a particular aspect of a skill: For instance, Melee 3 (Swords 1). When you're using that skill, you get to roll extra dice equal to the value of your specialization.

3. Virtues

Virtues are the things your character tries to live up to and holds close to his heart. They define the values you think are important, as well as the ones that you don't. There are four virtues, each with a rating from 1-5.


Compassion How caring your character is for others in need, and how willing he is to help. A person with 1 compassion is almost as uncaring as a machine. One with 5 would try to help even someone who wanted to brutally torture and kill him.

Conviction How willing your character is to 'do what is necessary'. The balancing virtue to compassion, this virtue represents the sort of sacrifices a character is willing to make to further his cause, and represents the, to use the vernacular, 'moral balls'  the character has.

Temperence How calm and collected your character is, and how able he can resist attempts to play on his convictions. The character with low temperence is an indulgent hothead. The character is high temperence can resist the lures of pleasure, attempts to get him angry, and attempts to sway his emotions.

Valor How gutsy your character is. A character with low valor touts 'discretion as the better part'. A character with high valor laughs at approaching armies, charging in with shouts of 'Come on, guys! We can take 'em! They only outnumber us 100,000 to 1!"

4. Willpower

Willpower is *important*. It represents many things; reserves of emotional strength, the ability to resist attacks on the mind, the ability to put in that extra effort to make something *work*. The will of man is a powerful force, and can lead people to do all kinds of incredible things.

Unfortunately, it is limited. After great exertions of will, it takes time to regain those reserves of inner strength. You have, essentially, two sets of Willpower; one is your Permenant Willpower Score, and the other is your Temproary Willpower score. You can spend points of willpower (deducting them from your temproary score) to do the following things.

1. Get a free extra success on a dice roll.
2. Get extra dice on roll equal to a related virtue, i.e. if you're trying to save your loved one from a bandit, you can spend a point of willpower and roll extra dice on your attack roll equal to your compassion.
3. Many abilities can be resisted by spending a point of willpower.
4. Many abilities can only be *used* by spending a point of willpower.

You regain Willpower every day. Whenever you rest, you replenish your stocks of temproary willpower; roll your highest virtue, and you regain willpower points equal to your successes.

5. Essence

Essence can be defined as your characters raw ability to pull off 'crazy stuff'. Essence has few effects on it's own; rather, it's a 'power indicator' the relates to your charms. Essence determines your 'mana pool' for pulling off special tricks, like a powerful attack, a super-high leap, or a spell. It frequently determines the power of such tricks, too. The utility of essence will become more clear once you have a copy of the core book and are able to read the charms.

Essence also applies to certain combat-related instances.

-All your dodge pools are increased by your permenant essence.
-Whenever you successfully land a hit, your total damage cannot be lowered by your opponents soak to lower than your essence.

6. Essence Pool

Your essence pool is primarily determined by your essence, though your Willpower and Virtues also play a role. It's used to fuel charms and the like, and you lose essence from your pool as you pull off more and more stuff.

You regain all your essence by sleeping. You can regain chunks of essence by performing stunts during combat, but we'll get to that later.

7. Backgrounds

Unlike most storyteller games, Backgrounds will not apply much in this one. There are two backgrounds you are able to take. Think of them as things your character brings with you into the contest, because in this game, that's all they are.



1. Artifact. Artifacts are individual, special items. You can only have one artifact, and it can have a maximum rating of 3.

2. Familiar. A familiar is a creature who comes with you. The number of points you place into it determines it's power.

1 dot will buy you a trained bird, cat, or dog.
2 dots will buy you a horse, or a slightly bigger dog.
3 dots will buy you a creature that has some serious attack power, like a tiger or cheetah. You can't ride it.
4 dots will buy you a creature that has some serious attack power and you *can* ride it- *or* a supernatural creature of some kind.
5 dots will buy you a supernatural creature that is your trusted friend.

Likely, you'll need to speak to me about exactly what your backgrounds will consist of.  You can start with any mundane items you want, however.



8. Health Levels

All characters start with seven health levels. When you lose them all, you're dead. Being at low health levels also brings into play wound penalties, which are subtracted from all your dice pools until you're healed again.

9. Damage Soak

Damage Soak is determined by your armour and your stamina. When someone hits you, they get a certain amount of damage dice. You subtract your soak from the number of dice they roll.

10. Stuff on the character sheet you don't pay attention to.
Don't worry about the Anima, Limit Break, or Virtue Flaw parts.


11. Charms
Charms are, as has been said, how your character does supernatural stuff. Charms exist for every ability, but you'll likely only be interested in buying charms for a few abilities.

Direct combat charms range from making you swing more accurate, causing more damage, and making extra attacks without splitting your dice pool. Defense combat charms allow you to block without allocating an action to do so, have a perfect defense that can resist any attack, and make counterattacks when you are struck. There are many more estoric effects charms can have, which you will no doubt see when you get a copy of the rulebook.

There are four basic kinds of charms.

Simple: Simple charms are actions all by themselves. A simple charm typically creates a specific effect. For instance, 'Iron Raptor Technique' allows you to throw your weapon at a target, then get it back.

Supplemental: Supplemental Charms are used to boost other effects. For instance, 'Excellent Strike' allows you to roll more dice when attacking your opponent.

Reflexive: Reflexive charms are charms that you can use in response to other actions, or at any time they are appropriate. For instance, 'Dipping Swallow Defence' allows you to block any attack made against you without having to prepare to block it beforehand.

Extra Action: Extra Action charms enable you take extra actions during a turn. Not to be confused with Reflexive charms, Extra Action charms are declared as your action for the turn.

You can only use one charm each turn.

In Exalted, each 'type' of Exalt has a different set of charms. You can base your character off the following kinds; Solar, Abyssal, and Sidereal.

Solars are the only kind covered in the core book. Abyssals are *very* similar to Solars but have a few interesting differences. Sidereals are a *very* different experience to the other two. All characters, can, however, use any martial arts style they like that isn't a special sidereal style.

Essence is also determined in a differe

12. Combos

The exception to that is, of course, a combo. A combo allows you to use multiple charms in a single turn. You can buy combos during character creation. Combos enable you to, for instance, combine a reflexive defensive charm with a supplemental offensive charm, enabling you to make a powerful attack, but still be able to guard yourself.

Combos can only consist of charms in the same tree. You must activate your combo when you act during your turn, and spend a willpower point to do so, as well as the full essence cost of all the charms. There are also rules on the types of charms that can make up a combo.

Simple Charms, if in a combo, *must be used* if the combo is activated. You can only have one simple charm in a combo.

Supplemental Charms, if in a combo, must be used for *each dice action*. For instance, if you take two actions in one turn when using a supplemental charm, it must be able to apply to both of them. You can have as many supplemental charms in a combo as you want.

Reflexive charms can be used when appropriate. You don't *need* to use reflexive charms if the opportunity doesn't come up.

Extra Action charms must be used if part of a combo. You can only have one Extra Action charm in a combo.



Building your Character

1: Determine Attributes. Prioritize your attributes (Social, Mental, and Physical). You have 8 points to allocate to one, 6 points to allocate to one, and 4 points to allocate to the other one.

All your attributes have a base score of one, and you use your points to add to that.

2: Determine Abilities. You have 25 points to split between your abilities. You can't put any ability over 3... yet. Ignore rules for favoured/caste abilites. Unlike attributes, abilities *don't* start at 1, and if you don't have any dots in something, you're considered untrained in it.

3: Determine Virtues. All virtues start at 1, and you have 5 points to divide amongst them.

4: Pick 24 charms. You'll want to buy combat charms more than anything else, obviously. You need the Core Rulebook to pick charms.

If you have access to another book beyond the core rulebook, you may want to buy charms from it. If you want to achieve a specific effect, I'm willing to help you along the way. This is probably the most important part of character generation, and unfortunately the one I can't offer much general advice with; the charms you pick are dependant on the sort of style you want to fight with. Feel free to approach me for advice. I welcome it.

5: Record your other stats.
  Essence = 2
  Willpower = The sum of your two highest virtues.
  Essence Pool for Solars/Abyssals = 10xEssence + 2x Willpower + The Sum of your virtues
  Essence Pool for Sidereals = 8xEssence + 2x Willpower + Sum of your Virtues
  Health Levels: 7, plus any gained from charms.

6: Spend bonus points. Ok, I lied. This is just as important as buying charms. You    have 25 bonus points to spend on stats. Different stats are worth different amounts of points, as shown by the following list.

Attribute: 4
Ability: 1 (2 for abilities over 3)
*Background: 2
*Speciality: 1
Virtue: 3
Willpower: 2
*Essence: 7
Charm: 5
Combo: 1/Charm in the combo.

* = You can only raise/modify this by spending bonus points.



<-Combat->

2400 words and I'm just hitting combat. Funky.


1. Timing

Combat takes place in turns, each of which lasts roughly three seconds. To determine the order in which players act, they roll initiative, which is 1d10+(wits+dex+adjustment for weapon). We're going to use the declare up, resolve down method of acting, so the person who rolls *lower* says what he wants to do *first*, and the person who got higher then says what he's going to do- then acts first.

There are a couple of ways to act before your iniatitive.

i. An appropriate reflexive charm, such as Flow Like Blood.
ii. Abort to full dodge/full parry. (See section on defending.)

2. Movement

You can move (Dex+12) yards per turn for free, without needing to take an action. If you spend your whole turn moving, you can move (3xDex+20) yards per turn. You can also jump over rocks, roll, swim, or whatever is appropriate, though lengths will be appropriately shortened.

3. Attacking

Want to hurt someone? Make an attack! Your attack pool will generally be CombatSkill+Dexterity+Weapon Mod. You need to roll one success to hit. (This is not as easy as it sounds.) If you hit, you get to roll damage.
The damage pool for a melee weapon is counted by Strength+Weapon Damage+Extra Successes - Opponents Soak. Damage for a ranged weapon is counted by Weapon Damage+Extra Successes - opponents Soak. The 'Extra Successes' are the number of success you got on your attack roll after the first one that let you hit your opponent.

You must then roll your damage pool. For every success you get (10s *don't* count for double here), your opponent takes a level of damage. Your total damage pool can never be lower than your Essence, regardless of your opponents soak.

4. Defending

Well, actually, no. There are numerous ways to defend against an attack.

The most obvious is to use your action to block or dodge. You roll Dodge/Melee+Dexterity and count your successes. Subtract your successes from your opponents. If he ends up with none, he misses, but even if he doesn't, you probably diverted some of the power of the attack.

You can also utilize your ability to *full parry* or *full dodge*, if you're being subjected to multiple attacks. If you havn't taken your action yet, you can abort whatever else you planned to do to full dodge or full parry.

If you do so, you then parry the first attack made against you with your full parry/dodge pool. For each subsequent attack, you subtract one die from your pool. Note that if you are parrying, you can only parry a number of attacks equal to your weapons rate. If you are dodging, remember that you add your essence score to all dodges.

5. Damage and Soak

There are three kinds of Damage in this game.

-Bashing damage is nonlethal damage that clobbers you about a bit. It heals rapidly, so you won't need to worry about it. You can soak bashing damage with armour, and your full stamina (so, if you had stamina three and B3 armour, you'd be able to absorb 6 bashing damage.)

-Lethal damage is lethal damage that is generally inflicted by pointy objects. It heals not so rapidly, but fast enough- barring good medical services or the like, lethal damage heals at the (accelerated for this game) rate of 3 levels per day.

-Aggravated damage is *really* lethal damage, inflicted by powerful magical attacks, some kinds of poison, amputated limbs, fire, and the like. It doesn't heal at all during this game. Try to avoid getting hit by it.

If you take all your health levels in bashing damage, you're knocked unconcious (and the fight is over).
If you take all your health levels in lethal damage, you're dead. (the fight is over).
If you take all your health levels in aggravated damage, you're deader than dead. (There might be some chunks of your body left over.)

6. Multiple Actions

As well as by using charms, you can take multiple actions in a turn by *splitting your dice pool*. This can allow you to, for instance, attack and parry in the same turn.

If you do so, however, your actions are rushed, and less efficient. If you take more than one action in a turn, you lose from *all* your action pools a number of dice equal to the number of actions you took. Also, your actions have a progressive 1-die penalty after the first one. So, if I took three actions, I'd lose three dice from my first action, four dice from my second, and five dice from my third. Keep these penalties in mind when taking multiple actions.

Aditionally, all weapons have a stat known as 'Rate'. This figure is the maximum number of actions your weapon can take each turn, without the use of charms. So a weapon with a rate of three could parry once and attack twice, or just parry three attacks a turn, but couldn't attack 4 times a turn.

7. Stunts

Stunts are how you try to look cool during a fight. Stunts also allow you to break the rules (for instance, a well-described stunt can let you catch an arrow out the air.)

Stunts are somewhat arbitrary, but I consider myself a fair judge, so make an effort to be cool and descriptive throughout your fights.

You can get up to three bonus dice on an action thanks to a cool stunt, and you also gain back a small amount of essence, as well.


<-References->

I think that's pretty much it. I'm sure, though, you wants stats for all your weapons and the like.

You can get the stats from the Exalted Players Guide. Ignore the stats provided in the core rulebook- they've been errated. If you don't want to download the players guide, but want to use a specific weapon, talk to me, and I'll tell you the real stats for it.

I hang around in #elysium on dejatoons. Drop by and chat to me about the game, if anythings unclear. :D

[Rezantis]

In.

[Carthrat]

I'm constantly trying to balance this game. Therefor, character design rules will change. I'll post what changes here.

I *emphatically encourage* you all to put effort into character design. That's pretty much where most of this game is; that, and *looking cool*.

Current Change: 24 charms instead of 12.
                        25 ability points instead of 20.

This allows you to dump points into things you *don't need*, but can use to pull random stunting effects during a fight. Stunts are *cool* and allow you to interact with the environment with awesome ways. Please take advantage of that.

[Carthrat]

Ok, I'm hoping to hold a meeting this weekend so I can chat to you about what you want out the game, what you expect, your characters, etc. etc.

If you have any questions, that'll be a good time to ask them. We'll all be able to discuss concepts and the like there.

I'm aiming for this Saturday, 9pm EST. If that's an issue, drop a line. The meeting will be held in #elysium.

[Sunhawk]

What's the status of this?

[Kwokinator]

The status is Rat leaving five minutes after calling for and starting the meeting <_<

[Carthrat]

Code Select Expand

And then, Kwok was gored by an amphibious dire elephant.

Pending. Poke me sometime.

[Carthrat]

Ok, it's about time to get this properly started.

If you havn't created a character yet, now is the time to do so. I want submissions in my PM box by the end of this week. Background and stuff is a must, yada yada. If you have any questions, toss them at me, and hopefully we can get going fairly soon.

[Dracos]

Good luck, Rat.  If ye need a forum, poke me.

Dracos