Exalted using HeroQuest

[Drastic]

http://www.mindspring.com/~gardrastic/HQ_Exalted_conversion.html">My current working conversion.

I hope to bring some Actual Play reports in coming weeks.

[Mike Holmes]

This looks really cool, but I can't comment in depth because I have next to no experience with Exalted. Can anyone with more Exalted experience attest to the potential effectiveness of this conversion or problems with it?

Mike

[Skadedyr]

Have done any actual play with this?

I'm wondering how the Essence Contest rules to emulate Essence mote expenditure come out. I'm guessing that high-Essence Exalts could use their Charms actively at a slightly reduced rating to ensure success in the Essence Contest and thus get no Essence drain. Could this be open to abuse? Is the rule that Essence can't be higher than the lowest Charm rating meant to ensure the potential for failures whenever Charms are used actively?

Should Total Defeat in an Essence Contest mean no more Charm use, either actively or as an augment, until Essence is healed?

Overchanneling seems a bit wacky. Is there any reason not to overchannel in a conflict? (Other than the Hero Point cost) The rewards are immense and the downfall means simply waiting slightly longer for Essence recovery.

As for sorcery, any reason for not using the HeroQuest magic rules? Also, I see the circles of magic as a game balance construct tacked on to the setting. Seems better to ditch them.

[Robert Ahrens]

Hi there.

I got recommended this thread by a poster who calls himself "Scripty" on RPG.Net but, as I understand, is something of a regular here.

I've looked at your conversion a bit before.  I think it's a very interesting one.  Definitely not what I would've done off the top of my head, but you've got some interesting concepts going on.

Is it okay if I ask some general questions?

(I'm going to assume "yes" and just fire away here.)

First, a comment about Sorcery.  I really like the 3 Circles of sorcery.  I think they add nicely to the thematic nature of Exalted and I'm happy to see them kept.  I'd have to go back to your conversion to really dig out the details, but in my mind I'd been planning to simply charge 3 character points/circle for Sorcerous ability and then allow Sorcerers to add spells based on whatever strength their magic keyword was set to.  It seems you could cannibalize the different types of HQ magic to produce different flavours of effects.  If you've got any thoughts on why you designed your conversion magic the way you did, I'd be happy to hear them.

Secondly, I was wondering if you could explain a bit about the decision to design Essence as a resistance roll.  Looking at this, I was struck by the similarity to the way that Mutants & Masterminds handles "Tiring" powers.  (For those not in the know, a HERO power which is particularly tiring costs extra Fatigue points to throw around.  An M&M power requires a Fortitude save vs 10 + Power Level Used or causes the character to become Fatigued.  In M&M, like HQ, a Hero Point can be used to boost this roll.  So, basically, what you have is a probabilistic loss of Hero Points or a willingness of the character to accept some limitation.)  

In looking at Essence, I'd just been planning to translate it to a pool of points.  So if my Essence is 12w2 then I would have 52 Essence points to power effects.  From what you've written, it looks as if you've considered this and discarded it.  I'd be interested to know the how and the why of that.

Probably a fair thing for me to comment at this point is that I don't have any "behind the wheel" time with HQ, which makes it a little harder for me to tell how things are going to come out in actual play as opposed to how they seem on paper.  So my third question is about benchmarks and how you go about establishing them.  I was suprised by how high you set the starting ability for the Solar keyword, but I guess it does fit the setting.  What I wonder about, though, is that this increases the disparity between Caste abilities and other abilities.  In Storyteller Exalted (STE) it basically doesn't matter which Caste I take, I can create almost exactly the same character any which way, particularly due to the presence of Favoured abilities.  But it looks like in HQE my character will be a lot more strongly coloured by his choice of caste.  Am I right in that?

Okay.  Probably enough for now.  I'll do my darnedest to go back over your conversion and look for more thoughts to think.  

I'm pretty excited about this and I hope I have something useful to offer you.

Thanks,

- Scorpio mighty curious.

[Drastic]

Crikey.  I've been meaning to get back to this, but my gaming time has suffered badly over the months since the initial stab at it, due to job foo coupled with a burnout with my local tabletop group.  

This recent thread resurrection is clearly some sort of omen. :)

No actual play as yet, unfortunately, see aforementioned burnout.

I've got scattered notes for another stab at the magic system, which I like the look of better--the greatly higher ability ratings for magic foo in 1.0 bothered me at the time I slapped them down.  My thought at the time was that I wanted magic to be the Exalted's prime advantage, and that when they were out, they could be taken down by a suitably "mundanely" skilled mortal--which generally fits the source material, in my opinion.  So initially, magic ratings have the whopping trait disparity you see on the webpaged version.

The notes I have to collate and update the page with boil down to much lower traits in general for magic abilities--starting on the order of 20ish per Charm.  The difference is, direct uses of Charms add the full trait directly to another trait that it's powering.  Golden Solar Overpower Meltdown Eighteen Dancing Monkey Sword Technique adding its 20 to your standard "swordfighting" trait in a contest, for instance.  I'm aiming at removing that doubletake-causing big trait disparity, while keeping the magic potent--adding a full mastery level at will, on top of other non-magical augments and HP-bumping, should do just that.  It should also make the non-magical skills and such much more important, which is important.

Honestly, I'm not a fan of the three distinct Sorcery circles, and I think my current solution is simply a single Sorcery trait, that starts at the Essence trait rating (which is still a rather big number) instead of at the lower ratings for Charms.  The division of "Circles" of sorcery really only makes sense, in my opinion, in a task-resolution sense, whereas what matters in HQ is the overall impact on the conflict itself.

On the Essence Contest thing instead of point-pools etc.  This basically boils down to a serious dislike of the "Charm farm" aspect of Exalted, and a love of HQ's unified contest mechanics.  I also like the relative element of uncertainty it gives to magic use.  With the as-yet-scattered revision, characters should be confident of being able to fire off several charms without much problem, but further usages will increasingly risk "burning out" the capacity to use them--making extended contests a more dramatic and risky proposition as is appropriate, and allowing such things as an entire Wyld Hunt to take place as a large extended contest, with built-in modeling for the Hunt's tactics of harrying and exhausting those unclean Anathema demons before closing in for the kill when their ability to use magic is simply gone.

Using contests to model Essence use also enables augments and HP-bumps to be used for them, as is also appropriate in my view--a reborn Solar champion singlehandedly fighting back a horde of Outer-twisted barbarians from her adopted town is actually more potent, for a longer period of time, than one on the run, bereft of connections and relationships or any tie to the world.  Which is a thematic reinforcement I'm wholly in favor of.

[Drastic]

Oh, yeah, overchanneling--wacky, yes.  I honestly can't reconstruct what the hell I was thinking at the time. :)  It's getting removed as soon as I get round to revising the page.

[Blake Hutchins]

I'm using these rules for a Dragon-Blooded game using HQ that we're currently setting up.  Thus far, the trick has been informing the players to sufficient familiarity with the setting.  A Solar game would have been easier, but ah!  The D-B are, to my eye, so much more interesting thematically.

I'll report in detail when we're farther along.  I've also cleaned up some of the formating of the original notes and added some thoughts on chargen pertinent to Dragon-Blooded.

I actually like the overchanneling rules, as it means the Solars have to work a bit and pay a price to toast other Exalted.  I'm inclined to give Solars an easier time improving Essence and Charms, or maybe a larger Essence score to start with, but overall, I really like these rules and can't wait to try 'em out.  They neatly excise the overkill of Charm trees and add to the cool factor by leaving a lot to player interpretation.

Best,

Blake

[Blake Hutchins]

Hello,

Haven't tried these rules yet, as scheduling issues have severely retarded the progress of chargen.  However, as I go through the rules, I discovered some questions.

Charm use: I assume it is contest-based, not exchange-based, whether as augment or supplanting score?

Overchanneling: I like the idea, but as I examine it further, I'm inclined to agree that there doesn't seem to be a reason not to do it, particularly at the lower levels.  It  does, however, neatly provide a basis for the power difference between the various classes of Exalted.  I'm also new to actual play experience with HQ, so I don't know how well overchanneling scores reflect how well a Dragon-Blooded Circle would do against a Solar.  Right now, I'm thinking it best to run the rules as they currently are through the in-play grinder and see what colors come out.

That said, I'm intrigued by the mastery-adding idea and would like to see your take on it,  Drastic.  Seems apropos for Charms, and then leave Sorcery at the high levels it's at currently.

Caste/Aspect powers:  I like this mechanic, and plan to add a variable-score "Anima Banner" Trait created by certain Essence use to reflect the uncontrolled dimension of anima manifestation.  This Trait would trigger at certain levels of augmentation use or full-on Charm/Spell use, waxing and waning as circumstances and player Essence use dictate.  The simplest way to accomplish this is to have the score mirror the number a player augments to the score in use, to change up by that amount each time the player alters the FX of the Charm use.  In the case of full-on Charm ability supplanting the regular ability, I'm inclined to add the Mastery level number directly to the Anima Banner score and then wait for the results of the Essence Contest to determine the rest.

Best,

Blake