Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gimby" data-source="post: 5191135" data-attributes="member: 49875">I think Exalted is a good source of examples of bad rules - its been a while since I read the book but I recall Two-Target Method for Lunars in 1e was a particularly egregious example of this.  IIRC it was a charm that let you make two attacks but was strictly worse than just splitting your dice pool (something every character could do).  2e has (or had, the errata team is pretty active these days) a series of effects copied from 1e that referenced parts of the system that no longer existed and contradictory rules.  A good example would be Soulbreaker Orbs - their text says that you cannot dodge them even with Seven Shadow Evasion.  Seven Shadow Evasion says it always applies even when an effect says it doesn't.  The rule to resolve this contradiction says that the defense wins.  So you can dodge a Soulbreaker Orb with SSE even though it says you can't.  Or Obsidian Shards of Infinity in 2e which makes you either utterly unbeatable or is largely pointless depending entirely on Storyteller fiat.  This kind of thing doesn't make Exalted a bad game, just a mechanically weak one.  The books go to some length on what kind of game it is meant to produce, but following a strict reading of the rules leaves a bunch of holes.  A good ST can certainly get a good (or even truely excellent) game out of it but a poor one will have a lot of trouble.  Thats really my metric for whether a game is well designed - can a new or weak DM follow the instructions in the book and get a satisfactory session out of it?The transparency thing is important too - a tool can be perfectly well designed but simply the wrong tool for the job.  Trying to get a high-flying mecha game out of WHFRP2e is going to be an exercise in futility.</blockquote>

Verification