Ferret said:
ME ME ME! I know the WW system as I've played a V:TM game before, but i haven't a clue about Exalted...
Exalted uses a different variant from Vampire - I'd say they're about as close as AD&D2e and D&D3e. Notable differences:
1. All rolls are made against a target number of 7. Higher difficulty simply means you need more successes. The Sidereal exalted supposedly have charms that change the target number (manipulating fate and stuff). A roll of 10 indicates two successes for non-Extras (Extras are faceless NPCs whose main purpose is to stand around and be killed in cool ways by the PCs).
2. There is no declaration phase in combat. You just wait until your turn, and then you do your stuff. This means that you can't take multiple actions to parry/dodge people attacking before you. However, you can "abort to parry" or "abort to full dodge" if you're attacked before your turn. Abort to Parry means you get one parry with your full dicepool against that attack. Abort to Dodge means you get to dodge the first attack with your full pool, the next with one die less, and so on. On the other hand, Parry is usually higher on account of getting a bonus from your weapon.
3. Damage works differently. In Vampire, the sequence is something like: Roll damage dice, roll soak dice, subtract soak successes from damage successes, take the difference as health levels. In Exalted, you subtract soak from raw damage before you roll, though with a minimum of one die (though there are exceptions to that). Also, all attacks add successes to damage - I think only firearms do that in Vampire.
4. Instead of using a Willpower point to get one automatic success, you can use it to get a number of dice equal to one of your virtues (that's relevant to what you're doing). The virtues are: Compassion, Conviction, Temperance and Valor.
5. When performing multiple actions, you don't split your dice pool. Instead, if you're performing X actions, you get X dice less on the first one, (X+1) less on the second one, and so on.
I think those are the major mechanical differences between the Storyteller versions. The setting, of course, is even more different than this. I think there's a pretty good introduction to the setting hidden somewhere on the WW website, if you look for the Exalted quickstart (NOT the recent Tomb of Five Corners, but the older one that can be accessed through their Exalted site).