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Message: <blockquote data-quote="maddman75" data-source="post: 4638899" data-attributes="member: 2673">On White Wolf's site (and many fan sites) you can find an innovation known as the Initiative Wheel.It sort of looks like a clock, with say 10 or 12 wedges.  When you roll initiative, put a mini or marker at that spot.  So one PC gets a three, one gets a four, and the bad guys get a six.  You go around the clock to the first PC, at 3 o'clock.  He takes his turn, say he does something with a speed of 5.  So after his turn his mini goes up five spaces to 8 o'clock.  Now its PC #2's turn, and so on.  Makes tracking initiative very quick and easy, and everyone can see who goes next.Another tip is you know the Power Cards everyone is nuts for in 4e?  They have them for exalted as well on WW's site.  Print them out for your players, makes it easy for them to see what they can do.The biggest thing to remember is that Exalted is not D&D.  Leave those sensibilities behind.  D&D is very much a 'coming of age' game, where the PCs begin as little more than nobodies, and as they adventure they gain in power and stature.  Exalted PCs start the game as demigods.  They were already exceptional people who were chosen to be the incarnations of the Unconquered Sun.  A starting Exalt is more powerful than any mortal, no matter how skilled or experienced, can ever hope to become.  The key is to go with this.  Writing plots D&D style will not work.  The players will take your plot, wad it into a little ball, and stick it where you'd like it least.  Being able to kill things?  Bah.  The combat monkeys are the least of your concerns.  Its the social and bureaucracy characters you have to watch for.  With the right charms they can convince the enemy army to work for them, found a religion based on themselves, and sweet talk the gods into letting them rework creation.  Magic items exist but are much less of a concern.  The PCs can start with powerful items if they wish, and the items that villians have are probably not as powerful or ill suited to the PCs.  Money?  A Bureacracy built PC can become an economic powerhouse in short order, if that's what they wish.  Fame?  Get the right charms and make some speeches and you'll have kingdoms hanging on your every word.D&D is built on exploration and skirmish combat.  Exalted is made to have single fights against superpowered foes extremely exciting.  The stunt dice are an essential part of this.  What you figure out in play is that the extra dice aren't the real benefit, the extra motes are.  So what happens in these epic fights is characters throw attacks at each other and block them with perfect defenses.  This goes on until people start running out of motes.  At this point, everyone will start stunting like crazy, hoping to do enough cool stuff to get their super-attack off while they opponent is tapped out.  Makes them really, really exciting.The setting as well is built for this.  One of the central conceits of Exalted is that the storyline will never progress.  They will *never* (and have kept to this very well) come out and say "Oh, by the way here's the deal with the Scarlet Empress" or "Here's how the Mask of Winters got taken care of" or "This is what happened with the Dragonblooded civil war".  All of that is for YOUR PCs to resolve.  The setting is beautiful, but made with the assumption that the PCs will tear it into little bitty pieces and recast it as they please.As for the point buy, yes it is possible to make an Exalt that dies at the first sign of combat.  The best way to fix this is to insist that half the charms the PCs take are combat related, including at least one Ox-Body Technique and one Perfect Defense.  Your Invincible Sword Princess will probably take all combat charms, but even the Sorcerer type and socialite will know kung fu, because this is a kung fu game.The best way to sum it up is that Exalted is not a fantasy adventure game, but a fantasy supers game.  The plots should have more in common with M&M than D&D.A really fun game.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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