Exalted: Ink Monkeys
So Ink Monkeys is officially making my brain hurt. There are so many new charms, keywords, errata, etc that I'm having trouble absorbing it all. I'm not even reading the stuff that isn't for Solars and Lunars and it's still too much. What I'm absorbing I mostly like. The new char gen rules are a little min maxy but at the same time most of them make sense to me. I'm not sure how I feel about all of it though. I like the higher bonus points all around and I really like the free specialties and the not having to spend for intimacies anymore. I like that charms are cheaper now, though 3/4 may be a little too cheap. I always thought they were a bit expensive. I don't like the not requiring any caste/favored charms. That's just dumb. And while I like Willpower being cheaper, I'm not really sure how I feel about what they did with splitting it from the Virtues.
I like the fact that they've tried to improve Dawns so that they have their own niche in combat as opposed to anyone being able to be as good as a them just by taking one combat ability as favored.
The new Keywords are interesting. They have good flavor and make sense but some I'm just not so sure about. I like Reactor, Martial, Martial-Ready. I'm a big fan of Merged because buying the same charm multiple times just because it was in a different ability was dumb. Dawn again helps make Dawns not obsolete, but Overdrive I don't really like. It adds more bookkeeping in combat which I'm always against, and while yes I've always thought Essence-Gathering Temper sucked and needed to be replaced with something more generally useful and less broken when it is useful, I don't like the Overdrive system. If you just used the new version of EGT without the idea of Overdrive it would actually serve as a rather nice charm, balanced and useful. Overdrive is for hack-and-slash power gamers.
Eventually I'll get through all of the other stuff that they've posted but for right now that's all I've gotten through/have absorbed. For those of you that haven't read the Ink Monkeys' blog and like Exalted, you should. It's got a lot of really fun and cool things in it. Just beware of the power creep and the stuff that's broken.
I like the fact that they've tried to improve Dawns so that they have their own niche in combat as opposed to anyone being able to be as good as a them just by taking one combat ability as favored.
The new Keywords are interesting. They have good flavor and make sense but some I'm just not so sure about. I like Reactor, Martial, Martial-Ready. I'm a big fan of Merged because buying the same charm multiple times just because it was in a different ability was dumb. Dawn again helps make Dawns not obsolete, but Overdrive I don't really like. It adds more bookkeeping in combat which I'm always against, and while yes I've always thought Essence-Gathering Temper sucked and needed to be replaced with something more generally useful and less broken when it is useful, I don't like the Overdrive system. If you just used the new version of EGT without the idea of Overdrive it would actually serve as a rather nice charm, balanced and useful. Overdrive is for hack-and-slash power gamers.
Eventually I'll get through all of the other stuff that they've posted but for right now that's all I've gotten through/have absorbed. For those of you that haven't read the Ink Monkeys' blog and like Exalted, you should. It's got a lot of really fun and cool things in it. Just beware of the power creep and the stuff that's broken.