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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 4580254" data-attributes="member: 907">Nine or ten? Try 20+ for a maxed-out starting character who really wants to succeed at something (5 stat + 5 skill + 10 from the Excellency charm, plus possibly up to 3 from specialization and maybe some other modifiers like weapon accuracy).Unlike older versions of the Storyteller system, the target number for those dice is a constant 7 (unless messed about with by one of the Exalted types, whose schtick is to mess about with fate), with 10s counting double (which means that you get on average ½ success per die). If something is more difficult, that's represented either by losing dice (for things that make you less capable, like being wounded) or requiring more successes (for things that are more difficult in and of themselves).The Excellency thing mentioned above might need some explanation. The game has 25 different skills, each of which has a set of Charms attached to it (magical abilities linked to the skill). These charms are mostly different from one skill to another (Melee charms make you do more damage, get extra parries, counterattacks, and summon weapons; Presence charms lets you impress, persuade, or scare people; Bureaucracy charms let you speed up or slow down organizations or make stellar trade deals), but all share a couple of basic charms called Excellencies. There are three of those, which are independent of one another (you don't need the First excellency to take the Second excellency). One lets you add dice to a roll, the second lets you add successes directly, and the third lets you reroll and take the best.As to the differences between first and second edition, they each have their weaknesses. There was some skill reorganization in 2nd ed, such as merging Brawl and Martial Arts (both are about unarmed combat, and differed only in what charms were available) and adding the War skill (about mass combat, which is quite appropriate for a game where you're playing a potential God-King). They also cleaned up some stuff from the previous edition, like the spells.On the other hand, the combat system went from a turn-based system to a "tick-based" one. Each tick is approximately one second long, and performing an action takes a certain amount of ticks. But you can also perform a "flurry", combining multiple actions into one (and take a penalty for it). This leads to a system that feels like it discourages posing and dialogue and such - in a nebulous "round", it's easier to include those than in a system that takes each second into account. It also leads to an odd quirk where weapons have two stats measuring how fast you can swing them: "Rate" which says how many attacks you can make in a flurry, and "Speed" which says how many ticks attacking takes.The new combat system isn't all bad though. One of the advantages was adding passive defense. In 1st edition, you had to spend actions on actively dodging or parrying attacks made against you. This lead to some weirdness based on the way actions were declared ("OK, I'll attack him once and use two actions for parries." - "Hah, then I'll parry once and attack you three times!". Now, parrying and dodging and stuff is just assumed, although the defensive value is lowered the more attacks you make.</blockquote>

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