>What is Exalted?An epic high-flying role-playing game about reborn god-heroes in a world that turned on them.Start here:http://theonyxpath.com/category/worlds/exalted/>That sounds cool, how can I get into it?Read the 3e core book (link below). For mechanics of the old edition, play this tutorial:http://mengtzu.github.io/exalted/sakuya.htmlIt’ll get you familiar with most of the mechanics.>Gosh that was fun. How do I find a group?Roll20 and the Game Finder General here on /tg/. good luck>Resources for Third Edition>3E Core and Splatshttps://www.mediafire.com/folder/b54o6teut3fx6/Exalted_3e>Errata for Third Editionhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1n3ooTmopm3CBxW5jwPp1761xsaIccea-5XIhVM_PQEc/edit>Other Ex3 Resourceshttps://pastebin.com/fG1mLMdu>Resources for Older Editionshttps://pastebin.com/BXSGuFdQ>Essencehttps://pastebin.com/u3dtDFy2>NPCsHundred Devils Night Parade https://pastebin.com/iA1DYbpBAdversaries of the Righteous https://pastebin.com/KR7zTrpeEclipse Charms https://controlc.com/26c244cb>Current Quixalted Extended QE Version (Fanmade Supplement)https://files.catbox.moe/rjgmo5.pdf>Optional Quixalted Exaltshttps://www.mediafire.com/file/jg86yrewnhx2ov3/QE_Reject3eExaltHomebrew.pdf/file>4thchan Editionhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1XqjkwQIR38ov7uZVSZGpcjI0QCPIiFaQkVosZVlhGH8/(4.2Core)https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ChMTi_E4OfseIPvC0dJo99IrGkgRuBm0QgfxF1RZUAk/edit?usp=sharing(4.2Spirits)>Exalted Demake/Black Vault (Now with updates):https://pastebin.com/Tt1PjuYthttps://pastebin.com/qHRW9N51>>87969963 TQ: Tell me about hype stuff for the Underworld.
I've seen it said a couple of times in these threads that either Exalts in general or Solars in specific are weaker in Demake than in other editions. To which extent is the case, and is it totge detriment of the game? I'm desperately trying to find a way to get my group to play Exalted, after 3E and Essence have both turned out to be my pkayers' cup of tea.
>>88085146Other than the big iconic stuff like perfect defenses, Solar charms are in the same ballpark of strength as Wyld mutations. Drifting Leaf Elusion gives you +2 Soak, but only if the attack roll had fewer than (Athletics) successes. The Rugged Hide mutation gives a +2 to soak no matter what. Mundane medium armor also gives +2 soak, but -1 mobility. Even worse, you are starved for Essence. There is no way to recover Essence in a scene, recovering between scenes requires you to do heroic shit that is difficult without spending more Essence than you regain. Excellencies alone cost 1 mote out of a pool of 10. You basically have to have high Manse ratings or else you'll easily be run ragged by multiple fights in one day against supernatural opponents even if they're weaker than you.
>>88085146I want to qualify what is said here >>88085245 with the caveat that as a different system, Exalts also have much more mote-efficient abilities as a result. Swinging a skyscraper for example is something ONE Solar Charm can handle, it takes ONE Infernal Charm to overlay their inner world on nearby land and so on. The examples apart from Solars, Sidereals and Infernals are somewhat underwhelming otherwiseThe thing about many charms just being +2s and being starved for Essence still applies. It's just that correspondingly, the different approach to the system also means you'll be doing certain cool hero things a lot earlier in ExWoD then you would in 1e and 2e.
>>88085146>Exalts in general... are weaker in DemakeI think this is accurate, but not because their charms are weaker. Exalted don't really have weaker charms than they used to have, as such. Rather, the reason Exalted are weaker in Demake than in other editions is because Demake is a high-accuracy system where even regular mortals can pretty reliably land hits on Exalted, whereas in 1e/2e/3e you can coincidentally pump Defense to the point no mortal has a chance in hell of hitting you without even noticing while you're doing the rest of your build. Exalted charms also have fairly small numbers on them, because Demake as a system has smaller dicepools in general, but relative to the system they're not weak except in comparison to 2e or the higher watermarks in 1e.>Solars in specific are weaker in DemakeThis part doesn't seem to be true. Solars are pretty strong in demake. The numbers on some of their charms seem small, but those charms are usually very broadly applicable and are often adding to important attributes. Also, there is no dice limit and effects like those stack up, which gets powerful when you specialise.
Why exactly is Demake 20th anniversary and not a retooled 1e? I'd fucking glom all over an updated 1e.
>>88085633Because ExVsWoD was seen as a good system and he didn't want to accidentally ditch what was good about it when he went into making the new system, as the obvious answer.I'm kind of on the fence on whether I'd be more happy with the Demake we have or a theoretical 1e update, personally. A 1e update that drags in dot ratings and a cleanup for charms from ExVsWoD would be frikkin awesome and I'd be all over it, especially if it also dragged in some of the good stuff from later editions like sorcerous workings and a social system. That being said, I really like the high-accuracy combat style that EXD's given me and my game in the system's running well so far, and the Demake has the advantage of being very clean and easy to grok without scaring off my newer-to-Exalted players with supplementary books they'd need to grind through.
>>88084526>TQThere is legal ghost loli-pussy you can pound all day and that's about itThe Underworld might be the most boring place to play sadlyI know that's the intention, but something that intentionally sucks still sucks
If your storyteller approved literally any request you had, what combination of spirit charms would you get (Demon, Raksha, etc. included) as an eclipse caste?
>>88084526anyone have the final adversaries of the righteous?
Any one have the new Essence PDF?
What's the appeal of playing Exalted?
>>88089545Interesting setting and relatively high powerlevel.
>>88089545This >>88089590Came because heard you can use mountains as improvised weapons.Stayed because I learned how demons worked and wanted to know more
Bit of a longshot here, but I'm looking for a certain collection of homebrew Charms for 2e- two of the Charms I remember the collection having is a Malfeas Shintai where the Infernal literally smashes themself into a building in order to become part of it, and a repurchasable Solar Charm that adds +5000 years of lifespan per purchase. Those aren't the Charms I'm looking for, just the pones I remember. Are these ringing a bell for anyone?
>>88084526How do you typically handle the Incarna in your games?
>>88090964They're all so addicted to the games that they never leave the Jade Pleasure Dome or answer prayers. If you did manage to pull them away and break the addiction, the 5EDs don't really care and would do whatever they thought would get them more power and luxury. The Maidens have a soft spot for humanity and especially their own Chosen, but are scared of the Exalted and wouldn't openly rock the boat too much. There's no such thing as samsara, and if a Maiden tells you that some weird event must come to pass it's because they have a big rude-goldberg plot they're trying to pull. The Sun has extremely specific ideas about righteous conduct, but is afraid to try to enforce them because he views Exalts as mostly insane and dangerous. Luna, Aurora, and Nibiru all died in the war. Their Exaltations were cut up to make Exigents with. A quasi-ghost of Nibiru inhabits a giant black mountain in the Northeast formed from when Isidoros knocked Creation's second moon out of the sky. Gaia fled Creation after Luna's death and has not been seen since.Basically, DBs and Exigents already have closer people who caused their Exaltations and don't need relatable patrons.Sidereals and Solars have patrons who will be great boons but who won't just solve the setting for them if you meet them. And there's a replacement for the Dark Mother in Nibiru as a patron for renegade Abyssals, themselves a replacement for Liminals.
>>88086859>There is legal ghost loli-pussy you can pound all day and that's about itThe term you are looking for is "lolibaba"
>>88093369>They're all so addicted to the games that they never leave the Jade Pleasure Dome or answer prayers.I always found this to be kind of boring. I'm not saying that I want them to be completely free from the addiction but.... one or two of the Incarna having a resistance to it and being more "present" could be interesting.
>>88094515That was already true of Luna and Mercury.
>>88088996it's in the opi'm trying to find >>88088834 myself still. i think we might get a preview of that db novella soon since it went in for approval this week
Isn't that the old Backer version? I was talking about the latest release.
I ran ExWoD again tonight. The Technocrat leader fled after his defeat but warned the Abyssal there were problems out there he couldn't punch his way out of, the Lunar met the old Chinese man who sold her the book that led to her becoming the Lunar to begin with [and found out the Solar caused both their houses to get destroyed by killer robots], and the Solar's employees have secured about fifteen minutes for the Circle to talk [sans the Lunar who bailed] in the aftermath of Chinatown's destruction, before the NYPD gets there and demands answers on why tanks were shooting at helicopters in a city street. Next session will hopefully resolve the arc and we'll be past the Solar causing massive public masquerade violations. For now.
>>88095623the backer version that went through proofing is the latest release. the manuscript version is also still there. it's literally the newest file
>>88089590>high powerlevelA level 20 DnD adventurer is stronger than an essence 5 exalt. (in 3e)
>>88097882That's not really true, and at any rate high-level DnD is also pretty high powerlevel stuff. More importantly, though, I find it kind of sad that there are people old enough to post on 4chan who don't know what the word "relatively" means.
Who is your favorite Exalted character?My favorite is Harmonious Jade.
>>88084526In all honesty, the Underworld is a somewhat pointless place to be. It's pretty much the same thing as in Wraith: The Oblivion - Sure, it's cool, but you'd never want to stay there by choice. All the good stuff is in the real world, the Underworld is Creation's recycle bin.Like, even Abyssals prefer to hang out in shadowlands. The Underworld has nothing really worthwhile (and Necromancy kind of sucks anyway), and anything you find there is only useful in context to Creation (if it doesn't immediately dissolve in sunlight).
>>88097920Doesn't magic missile buttfuck solars? You can't dodge it or parry it without a perfect. and Exalts aren't super durable.
>>88098027It deals very little damage.
>>88098027Apples and oranges; D&D characters can't parry or dodge attacks at all. They have to rely on armor class to avoid taking damage from hits. The closest mechanic we have in Exalted 1e/2e is Hardness, not DV. Also, if you don't follow that reading, then magic missiles don't do enough damage per shot anyway and gets full blocked by Hardness.
>>88098047Upcast it. Done.
>>88098064Combat wise they're difficult to compare. But in terms of utility is there something a 3e Solar can do that a level 15 wizard can't? Talking about DnD 5e
>>88098065Still not much damage.
>>88098064Magic Missile in 3.5e deals 1d4+1 HP. An average peasant has 4 HP in DnD vs. 3 health levels in Exalted. Thus 1 HP = 1.333 Health Levels, In the unlikely event that a wizard knew to cast nothing but Magic Missile, the Solar would be equally unlikely to have Hardness 6 on standby to counter it.>>88098124Solars likely pull ahead in social fu and wide scale destruction. Maybe healing too, not that familiar with 5e.
>>88098027Depends on how Magic Missile interacts with Soak and Hardness, I guess, though I don't think it's very likely that an Exalt would just stand around and let himself be Magic Missiled to death instead of closing in and killing the wizard.
>>88098124>3e3e isn't high powered anon. The OP isn't talking about 3e when it describes a high-flying game. Nobody is really bothering to describe 3e as high powered when they have better editions to talk about for it. 3e also lacks a lot of depth, especially when it comes to Solars, who the devs don't even consider worth considering anymore when it comes to things like charm balance or considering their mechanics when building for future splats.Anywho, iunno, a level 15 wizard doesn't really have a Rain of Doom, Blessing of Archgenesis, or Summon 3CD equivalent. They can't build custom high-level spirits. 5e wizards aren't able to create mind-twisting texts so far as I'm aware, and their ability to modify memory is pretty sharply limited iirc. If we care about Workings, wizards lack access to a lot of utility effects Solars can drag out - wizards can't give people arbitrary permanent superpowers, or make a city float, and as far as I'm aware at level 15 you can't become a lich either.>>88098206>Magic Missile in 3.5e deals 1d4+1 HP. An average peasant has 4 HP in DnD vs. 3 health levels in Exalted. Thus 1 HP = 1.333 Health Levels, In the unlikely event that a wizard knew to cast nothing but Magic Missile, the Solar would be equally unlikely to have Hardness 6 on standby to counter it.Awful take. An average peasant in Exalted has 7 health levels, for starters, you're thinking of extras in 1e/2e (which are a different thing from an actual character appearing in the scene), and for second, HP doesn't correlate to health levels, or in fact to physical damage at all. Also, in what world is a Solar having 6 soak particularly unlikely? Is artifact armor unknown to you?
>>88098260The other editions aren't high powered, they just have bad rules.
>>88098280>counterattacks off a perfect defense with auto-hit infinite range infinite damage
>>88098260Both DnD and Exalted vary in power across their own editions. If you want to meaningfully compare them, you have to pick specific editions of each before you can even start dealing with system eccentricities like how DnD doesn't model wounds degrading your body's ability to function or Exalted's concept of minimum damage.
>>88098303If that's the case, don't pick 3e and then say standard peasants have three health levels, when in 3e that's not even true. 3e doesn't have extra rules, and trivial characters don't have shifted health levels.
>>88098321I was replying to a post that specifically said Exalted 1e/2e.
>>88097971Crab Mummy is cool. The only one of the Iconic Infernals that I'd describe as sympathetic.
>>88097971Maduka Shin. Because she's the perfect embodiment of how big of a fuck up Sids, even gold faction ones, are
No one cares about 2e. stop bringing up 2e.
>>88098797Nobody cares about you either. Stop posting
>>88098797>No one cares about 2e. stop bringing up 2e.True, but only if you include 3e too.
>>88098008>The Underworld has nothing really worthwhile (and Necromancy kind of sucks anyway)Welcome to yet another problem that remains unsolved across twenty years and three whole deditions.
>>88098797>t. 3e devswhy don't you wrtie a supplement about fucking your work up?
>>88098797*Raises hand trepidatiously*Um, I care about 2E… (God help me)
>>88098514What's wrong about the others?
>>88099844>why don't you wrtie a supplement about fucking your work up?Imagine having "JUST fucked an entire gameline up" in your resume.
>>88102471This is how Holdorke were hired.
>>88102459Nothing is specifically wrong with them, but Bitter Copal/Crab Mummy stuck out as the most sympathetic. He was forced to hide his religion lest he get executed, he was made to work under a far less competent surgeon on a ship whose crew didn't speak the same language as him, and when the only person who showed him kindness lost their arm due to a lost battle and a botched surgury, the incompetent superior blamed Copal, which caused the person to cut off his arm as revenge. When he was left to bleed out, he prayed for salvation, which came in the form of an Infernal Exaltation.
>>88089545HFY mostly. Consider for a moment that a regular tank built by mortals is tougher than the Unconquered Sun.
>>88102812>we tested it in my discord bros we threw five methusalah at one>UHM JUST FORGET ABOUT THAT AGG DURABILITY RULE
>>88103692Even with the Agg Durability rule, a tank is STILL tougher than the UCS.
>>88098514>Not picking the stripper nunDisappointing.
>>88104481Her outfit always felt weirdly out of place. Crab Mummys is weird but we knkow they're artefacts and what they do, Hullnun is just a nun with no further elaboration.
>>88104515How is it out of place?You've got cowboys in the Marukhan, Indians in Halta and British Naval Uniforms in.... Well all of the West aside from evil Hawaii.
>>88104663Not sure. It just feels like there's no other referenes to Catholicism where she's from. I know the Bishop is basically Underworld-Catholic, but he's in the Underworld. Who's your favourite Exalted character?
>>88103782With the aggravated damage halving Durability rule, the M20 heavy tank has the equivalent to ~20-22 Soak, 25 health levels, and DV 0 vs agg damage. The Unconquered Sun has 15 Soak, 25 health levels, and DV13 vs agg damage.This is not including any of the Unconquered Sun's many powers, and doesn't let him go into his second phase where he has like 180 health levels that regenerate each turn. Even without any of that, the Unconquered Sun's base chassis doesn't lose to a heavy tank. The most you can say is that he has less Soak.
>>88104734Don't forget a tank's many powers as well. Speed that outruns the vast majority of exalts, numerous weapons and support capabilities, reactive armor, APS, etc.
>>88104763>>88102812>Not even using official rules for your shitpost.
>>88104709>Who's your favourite Exalted character?Mine
>>88098027Oh probably. The downside there is that the Solar will very likely win initiative, and depending on how you alter health to work in whatever crossover we're doing here, would likely oneshot most wizards, sorcerers etc.
>>88098124Off the top of my head, declarw the destruction of a city or similarly sized region, which causes a star to fall, an earthquake to collapse the buildings, awakens an underground kaiju etc. Fire a man of steel heat vision style deathray that has effectively almost unlimited range, kill everything within several miles with one spell, parry an exploding volcano while inside it, deflect the sky as it falls etc.
>>88104763>Speed that outruns the vast majority of ExaltsI'm sorry, you think max speed 50mph with shit maneuverability is beating the majority of Exalted? Are you dumb? Maybe if you're just talking Dragonblood, but even they're easily hitting 40+mph with perfect maneaouvreability.>numerous weapons and support capabilitiesYou're comparing that shit to the Unconquered Sun? I'm looking at Heavy Tank stats right now and put very frankly they are not beating the Big Sunboy. Also, none of these weapons are really worth very much, if I'm being honest.>reactive armorNot canon to any written tank. You're just wanking now.>APSLiterally worthless in the confrontations we're talking about.>>88104794He's talking the overstatted tank from Mage 20th Anniversary, not the Modern one.
>>88098260What games are high powered then?
How would Solar Melee work in your ideal edition? What would the charms be?Also I miss Artchad.
>>88104860Exalted 1e and 2e. Tri-Stat. Mutants and Masterminds. Lasers and Feelings. Scion. Nobilis. Glitch. Dungeons the Dragoning 40k. Anima Beyond Fantasy. Maid RPG. Ars Magica. Debatably, high-point generation GURPS. Debatably, Mage.
>>88104858>Not canon to any written tank.Which just means that IRL tanks are even more powerful than the lore tanks.
>>881048911e and 2e aren't really that high powered, not compared to Nobilis at least.
>>88104891Why is maid on that list? Aren't most of the characters low powered?
Which Aspect of DB is best and why?
>>88104858I know he is. I’m saying that’s unreasonable to do.
>>88104908Or it means that the effect is insignificant enough that it doesn't effect the tank's stats.>>88104918Two things that are high power level can still have one be stronger than the other. You can have Dragonball at it's high watermark blowing up planets and Dragonball Z being so strong that DB characters are insignificant, while both are still high power.>>88104919Even those low-power Maid characters are competitive with high-power Maid characters, who can do quite a lot with the proper motivation and framing.>>88104928Fair and true.
>>88104935So how are high powered maid characters are stronger than third edition solars?
>>88104947
>>88104960So they can blow up planets? Or are you just saying magical girls in general are powerful?
>>88104935>Two things that are high power level can still have one be stronger than the other.But you still expect a "high power setting" to at least be stronger than the real world.
>>88104992Both, but mostly the first, as part of the idea that they can do a lot with the proper motivation and framing. Maid isn't a game that puts much focus on fighting people with big booms, but it is a game which took the stance that the booms can be as big as you'd like them to be when it fits the narrative. Events like finding a magical tome and hijinks ensuing are in the same category as needing to find a way to stop a meteor swarm KT-event'ing a planet. Also, the system adapts to different settings as appropriate, so yes, if it's appropriate to the setting (which 'magical girl' is very much an option for), things get extreme.
>>88105043Got it. Where does high powered start for you? What's the weakest example to make a game high powered.
>>88105096Games like Lasers and Feelings or Maid RPG that scale from very low average life to very high wildly overpowered are one way you could take that, but for games which present a power level that doesn't fluctuate like that... I think Ars Magica is my very, very borderline pick. I list it as high-power mostly because it presents itself like a game where you, the PC, are high-power compared to the rest of the setting. Taken on absolute metric, it's probably not that impressive. Coming from the other end of that, I'd say Godbound is high-power on an absolute metric, but your player character isn't high-power compared to the challenges you face, so that game is also very borderline but for the opposite reason.
>>881051323e solars can level cities with an arrow, along with all this:>>88104853So how is 3e not high powered?
>>881051663e combines the worst of the Godbound problem of Exalted not being as powerful compared to the generic antagonists in the setting as they'd need to be to be 'high power' with the Ars Magica problem of being questionable on an absolute scale. Sure, they can destroy a city or wipe out several miles of life, or reshape roughly the same area... but that's about it for 3e's upper end, unless you are particularly invested in doing force calcs for Heavenly Guardian Defense that don't even matter because energy as measured IRL doesn't apply in Exalted. Godbound's high end lets them turn the world into an oyster, and in Ars Magica you play a game where you and your peers are the near-uncontested highest power level.
>>88105242I would point out this problem also exists in 1E/2E. An Essence 5 Solar is generally outstatted by Essence 7+ spirits and demons in 2E, which necessitated a ridiculous Elder Essence system where the only real want to manufacture change on a global scale was to bunker down for 500 years until you matter. The Godbound issue is a fairly common problem for some reason.
>>88105242So godbound and ars magica are higher powered. That doesn't make 3e low powered. I don't LIKE it, but it's a high powered game.
>>88104734...you don't roll soak in 1e or 2e, it's auto, so he'd have 30 soak in your insanely poorly researched mathematics.
>>88107375>...you don't roll soak in 1e or 2e, it's auto, so he'd have 30 soak in your insanely poorly researched mathematics.M20 Soak is subtracted from actual damage, so one point of Soak in M20 assuming difficulty 6 on the damage and soak rolls is roughly equivalent to one Soak in Exalted, actually.To break that down, Soak in M20 is rolled, which would roughly halve it's value, then subtracts from damage successes, which would roughly double it's value, leaving it worth about the same as Exalted 1e/2e Soak, which subtracts from raw damage instead of post-roll damage and isn't rolled.
How do you handle the Emissary of Nexus in your games? I'm trying to find the sweet spot between "just a guy you can talk to" and "unstoppable cosmic horror." I like the idea that if you agree to play by the rules of Nexus it's possible to abuse the civilities to wield the Emissary like a big stick to swing at your enemies (and that your enemies in Nexus might try to swing at you). More of an environmental hazard than an enemy to be defeated, so to speak.
>>88107596Mine is always the same. It's a highly sophisticated first age automata that managed to survive the great purging during the Shogunate, and whose job was to facilitate commerce back in the First Age. Now that is still its job but it also uses the large income of Nexus to perform regular maintenance on itself
>>88107596I lean strongly towards unstoppable cosmic horror, by preference. It's the kind of being that you are not ever happy to have appearing on your doorstep. It's an icon of the city, but it's not the kind of being you would shrug off walking by on the street or sharing a pulley car with without commenting on it later. It is a creature of habit and many of it's habits are known, but it's also not a robot or a demon bound strictly to the letter of it's nature or code. It's not heartless or cruel, and while it is firm and prudent it is also willing to explain itself and engage with others in it's day-to-day, when it's not being a dogmatic killing machine. In terms of what it actually is, for me it's usually the ghost of a First Age luminary with a very powerful arsenal, local advantages, and ways around the normal weaknesses of ghost-kind. In a Nexus that I have presented to my players as the kind of place where there is a non-zero chance you could be knifed by a Solar in a back-alley if you aren't somewhat cautious, the Emissary is a full stop to nonsense.The Emissary is my Darth Vader.
>>88104891Dungeons: the Dragoning 40K Exalts are barely stronger than regular people and don't even have any niche super strong powers on top of that. They're weaker than even 3e Solars both in absolute terms and in terms of how they compare to their own settings.
>>88107777Honestly, that's fair.
>>88107596My personal favorite concept is that the masked figure is an emanation of the old god of Hollow, the god of exchange, whose Great Contagion riddled body lies in the ruins beneath Firewander."Exchange" is a concept with many meanings and broad applications. Exchange of goods, of coin, of thoughts, of fluids, of disease... It stands to reason that Nexus would be the ideal place for such a being, and if all of Creation is exchanged through Nexus it's not too much of a stretch to imagine how this being became absurdly powerful.It wants Nexus to flourish as a place where all things are exchanged while being careful NOT to rejoin with its old self and cause a Great Contagion 2.0. Outside of those concerns, its personality is surprisingly laissez-faire and it gives an unusual degree of latitude to the Council of Entities and Solars it likes to play around in Nexus. I think that gives it more of a unique potential for quiet melancholy than you might expect from an Essence 8+ beast.
>>88104884You have 15 charms5 in killin shit 5 in defendin shit5 in utility/battlefield movement. That's it. The charm tree is based on being flexible and useful in every combat situation that isn't long-range. The charms upgrade as you go up in essence.
>>88098853I guess it kind of works thematically i.e. Being dead sucks, and being a ghost isn't a condition that should be a long-term thing. But yeah, it also means you have no real reason to ever go there, since it sucks.Like you could always put ancient Artifacts there or something, but that feels a little forced.
>>88107777Dungeons the Dragoning 40K Solars are also strange. Don't they excel in warp magic or something?
>>88108387Even in Ex2 I'd call you a crackpot for this
>>88090964https://sponsoredbynobody.podbean.com/e/exalted-offtopic-is-the-unconquered-sun-relevant-to-the-setting/https://sponsoredbynobody.podbean.com/e/exalted-offtopic-the-five-maidens-and-the-sidereals-how-to-use-them/https://sponsoredbynobody.podbean.com/e/exalted-offtopic-luna-and-the-lunars-why-is-luna-so-bland-why-are-lunars-neglected/>>88098064>D&D characters can't parry or dodge attacks at allHP is short for hit points, not health points
>>88111044>2016>it's been 7 years
>>88084526>An epic high-flying role-playing>you literally can't fly in it
>>88112497>Turn into bird>Ride a cloud>Wings of the raptor >Jump good
>>88111044Hit points are meat points. Nothing else makes sense.
>>88107596My favorite interpretation was an idea posted on the old White Wolf forums where he used to be the high priest of Cecelyne before going rogue, since the priests of Cecelyne seem to be unique things rather than demons since they cannot be summon, bound, or banished. It's the reason why that one demon recognized him and the Emissary was able to permanently banish him from Nexus.
>>88111044What did they say about Lunars/Luna? I can't listen to it.
>want to throw hard as balls encounters at my circle who are all stupidly powerful, Essence 5 tier>they're actually pretty weak and don't use their skills to their full potentialOn the one hand it's kind of shit because it's impossible to gauge encounter difficulty because of how poorly they play versus their tools available, but on the other hand it actually means I can throw somewhat weak encounters at them and they'll be stumped.
>>88117652Holy shit do I know the feeling. Especially when just one or two of the players are significantly more mechanically competent. You have the variance between weak players taking the forefront while strong players slack and strong players suddenly deciding to take things seriously on top of the normal spikes that come when someone throws something random that's actually wildly overpowered.On the upside, weak players tend to try harder to engage without respect to power level. My experience is that they'll tend to do things like strategy and using the environment and circumstances present and be proactive, rather than when a strong player charging directly ahead trying their best to turn everything into whiteroom fair fights we both know they'll win.
>>88117652Just give them some magic items that bail them out when they're about to die.
>>88117707or just do what I do and come up with some contrivance of chance and/or narrative bullshit that does the same thing. I've had villains take a turn mid-combat to monologue more than a few times, and suicidally idiotic plays are not unique to my players. Often it's as easy as choosing poor targets for your antagonists, or interpreting an effect in a convenient way. 'That attack puts them through the wall, breaking line of sight and dropping them from the second floor, in case you want to run', or 'the hunting dogs slip their leashes and join the fray, attacking randomly', or 'the Abyssal steers their airship down to shouting range and shouts about the meaning of life'.I've chalked up a lot of crap to Fate and/or Destiny in my time.
>>88117802Problem is, that's really obvious and they'll feel like they haven't earned it.t. have no idea how the fuck to play my character but notice immediately when the DM tones things down.
>>88118039Fair. I haven't been getting that in my feedback from them, but it's also hard to source honest criticism in the first place outside of here, so, eh. I think it helps if you're adding drama and chaos to a scene rather than making things easy. It might also be that I'm typically pushing a lot of plot threads at once in the same general vicinity, and I've never put myself in a position where it's unreasonable for third parties to show up and complicate things.Also, I regularly make things harder for them as well, so... eh. Most of my asspulls I really am assigning to Sidereal or fate/destiny-based action in the background, too, fleshed out and not actually just 'lol i guess the pattern spiders hate you or something'. I'm honestly not sure if that helps the presentation of it but it makes me feel a little better.I should probably be more willing to cut throats, at least.
>>88117652I’ve had a semi-similar experience. I sold the party on the game as being very high powered and have had to balance that as the campaign went on with the fact their great power could be countered pretty easily by weakness exploitation. My party is about to hit a timeskip which will take them all to Essence 3 and most of the more common weaknesses will stop being a relevant factor for them. So I can finally remove the kids gloves and start fulfilling the promises I made early on. Which isn’t to say the Chosen haven’t been magnificent badasses since day 1, but it was always trivial for me to go around what they had. That won’t be the case after the upcoming skip.>Postskip the Infernal has 31 Soak with all her buffs up, and 20 Health. Her Shintai has 38 Soak and 10 Health. She has a charm that once a Story if she would die she instead shifts into Shintai if she hasn’t used it that Scene yet.>We did the math. It would take fifteen hydrogen bombs [20 aggravated Health levels is the number I’m using] to kill her. >She can pick up a skyscraper with her bare hands and fly at an average speed of 123 MPH, 410 with ten minutes or so to accelerate, 820 with acceleration time and Shintai. The next arc is probably going to be a filler arc of the group discovering the Infernal’s inner world and liberating it from a demon I’m basing off King Cold and his army I’m basing off the Freeza Force. A reasonable chance of the party fighting thousands of demons at once.
>>88118197Nice Hearteater pic
>>88118439I’ve not seen Chainsaw Man. She just happens to have the same color pattern as the Infernal.
>>88118439Oh come on, she's a pure SWLIHN Akuma.
>>88112497>The Infernal sprouts brass wings with Demon Emperor Shintai and flies away>The Infernal uses the Greater Shintai of the Endless Desert and becomes a disembodied disaster. He is technically flying very high, because he himself is high>The Infernal jumps on a crystal disc with Ascendant Objectivity Stance and flies away>The Infernal conjures a blood-hued wind with Earth-Skimming Objectivity Stance and flies away. On the one hand, at base the Infernal can only fly at a height of (Athletics) yaads so the Infernal isn't very high-flying at all. On the other hand, nothing stops the Infernal from flying up a skymountain's sheer surface and then presumably gently plummeting once he jumps off. On the third hand, an E4 repurchase removes the flight ceiling. On the fourth hand, an E5 repurchase makes the charm Indefinite and lowers the cost to 10-Essence, meaning that at E10 the Infernal can be as high flying as he wants to be, foreverI think it's safe to say that while Solars may be better at flying high, Infernals have the greatest number of opportunities to fly high at all even if they aren't focused into (charmline). The only Yozis with no published flying charms are Ebby (the cosmic shitposter) and Kimberly (the one written to be useless away from large bodies of water).
>>88118499Eh, I'd peg her more as an Exigent of Mind Control or something, shrug.
>>88118566Po-tay-toh Po-tah-toh.
>>88118566Bro she's LITERALLY a demon and Exigents are a copout with no unifying theme except whatever you pull out of your ass at any given moment. You might as well say Exigents are a good fit for Gilgamesh because Janest is already practically a Solar.
>>88118711Gilgamesh would fit better as an Exigent of Ancient Treasures.
>>88118541Also, Infernals who dip into both Adorjan and Swlihn trees become fucking fighterjets since Windborn Stride modifies their natural sprint speed and specifically mentions that any additional speed boost on top of that will use the modified base speed. So stacking AOS on top of that means an I lnfernals maximum flying speed can easily pass the sound barrier
>>88118499Vance said she is Hearteater like.Talking about them, the darkin from LoL are a good source of inspiration, specially Xolaani.
>>88084526ALERT>>88084526ALERT>>88084526OBNOXIOUS ALERTIt seems zippyshare is closing down at month's end. Download what you can and get the fuck outhttps://www.zippyshare.com/
>>88118711>>88118793Nah, Gilgamesh would be an Exigent of Gilgamesh. That's how awesomesauce he is.
>>88123191Exigents really warped the setting.
>>88084526uum im just starting out and reading the corebook to try and run itis there a fillable character sheet we can use?also any tips or heads up would be great
bump
>>88125884https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sG52v0QCij7-vI0Y3Mb2s2gusu8dfkzdUOLkmMshw3Q/editFan made ST guide.The best character sheet you can find online is via Lot Casting Atemi.https://www.lotcastingatemi.com/
>Ex3 Crucible of Legends – Sending to JoshLooks like it will be released by April/May.
What's wrong with this image?
>>88127437They are misplaced in the north? Iscomay would look like central Asians like the Uzbeks.
>>88127485Most of them do though.
>>88127437Lack of trees, snow or other background elements making clear this is in the Nort rather than South, mostly.
>>88129332The iron lamellar, color of the earth, and the make of the building in the background also make it look very southern, yeah.>Iron lamellarThe South's supposed to be famous for having lots of metals and other valuable resources compared to it's population. The average wealth per capita is incredible. Meanwhile, life in the North is generally hard and people need to group up to get the resources they need to survive, with it being difficult to farm or pull resources from the tough earth during the cold.>color of the earthI'll be honest, it looks like sand. Literally nowhere in Creation is known for being sandy other than blasted wastelands and the South.>The building in the backgroundYou know what the North is famous for? Deadly cold and lots of wind. You know what their buildings aren't going to have? More windows than wall, to let in the deadly breeze.
>>88129391I don't mind the armor, as North has iron as well, it's used for armor and lamellar could be used in Nort just as well as anywhere else. I fully agree with your other points, though, especially the ground looking like sand. As for the buildings, I don't mind the overall design but the design should be adapted to the locale. Like, domed buildings and such are fine, but as you say there probably shouldn't be so many windows. Or maybe there could be all those windows as that's clearly some sort of a palace and practicality doesn't have to be the only consideration, but they should have shutters, maybe ones decorated with scenes from Iscomay's past. Or, as Iscomay's a pretty wealthy and advanced nation, there could even be stained glass windows as a real sign of opulence.
>>88105166It's less that 3e isn't high powered in a vacuum compared to, say, the AVERAGE game of D&D/GURPS and not Epic Levels stuff. And more that 3e attempted to dial back the maximum scope of what Exalts can do even before passing E6 to the extent many complex or powerful effects were whittled down into much more underwhelming ones, it takes significant investment into many useless charms to gain one that can definitively turn the tide in a worthwhile endeavour and certain capabilities e.g. being strong enough to lift anything were highly curtailed i.e. muh structural integrity, despite the Lunar equivalent of Nine Aeons Thew being able to flat out ignore it.>>88119459And then there's Running To Forever which means they can rest by doing sick Top Gun tricks in the high firmament. The ultimate speed Charm is still repeated purchases of Principle of Motion>>88120124Vance says a lot of shit to try to promote the Nuxalted and desperately damage control for 3e Infernals. I'd take what he says with a grain of salt.>>88127429I keep forgetting what Crucible of Legends is even about, looking it up again, and then wondering just how many fucking arguments it'll start here and elsewhere.
>>88129602>spoiler>The ultimate Charm is still repeated purchases of Principle of MotionFixed that for you.
>>88125832Nah I like em, when I've finished throwing Incarna, Ishvara, Neverborn, Hekatonkhire, Third Circle Demons, Hannya, Paradox Spirits, Devil Stars, local lords and Guild Factors at my party I do like the reprieve of throwing an Exigent of Muscle or Swording or even Catgirl Muscle Swording Warstriders
>>88127437Apart from the fact it has a bear on it, it conveys very poorly the idea of Iscomay and that's even if you take into account that Iscomay's geomancy is meant to make things look pleasant. Also why is there just a random single black guy next to a bunch of white skinned people and another random dark as night black guy? There's no ethnic coherence. If they were trying to go for it being more eastern coded than northern coded, they ought to all be bark skinned and Asiatic. and yeah not sure what's going on with the building in the background. It just feels like the art notes were "this is a northern cold place but use hot places for inspiration too like Turkey and the Levant" and since the art studios they use for Exalted are creatively stunted they'll take the second part literally.
>>88129878>We still don't know what Devil Stars are>"Trust was bro, they're cool"
>>88129917Some ethnic coherence would be nice. Doesn't even have to be Direction-wide coherence, there's room for plenty of ethnic variation in any given Direction and black dudes can very well exist in the North, but people from the same ethnic group having some shared features would be good.
>>88129917Because blacks will make the neo nazis on 4chan yell, and if neo nazis are yelling you can pat yourself on the back about having Done Something about racism. That's why it's always black people in the North and never random Indonesian looking characters in the far East. The fact that it doesn't make sense is a bonus. You could easily just set these places in the South, but if you did people would have less to complain about.
>>88129929They are just those Aztec futa demon skeletons, no word about what they do or their cosmological purpose.
I think the devs really tried to up the diversity in the North because a lot of the new locations are not white: Iscomay, Medo and the Toumans, Ascension, Fajad.
>>88130341Scuse me. What now?
There's only three ethnicities in Exalted. Anime people, tan anime people, and Panther.
>>88130625no shit
>>88130742Right so the Aztec star demons are literally just skeletal women with snake dicks.
>>88127429>7 years since the core book dropped.>Only just now (maybe) releasing a ST guide.>For a game that didn’t have a Storyteller advice section in said corebook.I see my policy of ignoring 3e except to occasionally point at it and laugh has proven a wise one.Wake me up when 4th edition rolls around. And people who are actually good at their jobs are in charge.
>>88130750The way god intended.
>>88130625That in itself is fine, it's just that each group should have a distinct look, and also each group should look like they're actually used to dealing with snow and cold. Also let the Northern black guys at least have snow-white hair and ice-blue eyes or something.>>88130750Are you forgetting about the animal people or just including them in the anime people?
>>88130882I'm including them in Panther.
>>88130882>Are you forgetting about the animal people
>>88130936Watch out or Ophilis Ses will shank you in your sleep.
>>88130952Snakeman's days are numbered anyway. He's going up against the Guild, and we all know how trying to take down the Guild ends when it's not the PCs doing it. I reckon he tries to swing his cock around and gets done in by the Emissary, personally.
>>88129917the entire army of iscomay is made up of jannisary slaves, taken or born to fight for them in exchange for class changes after a lifetime of service. he could easily have come from a conquered people or as a recent inductee
>>88130758a lot of those are northeast/northwest and have realm contact, so some of their diversity is explainable
>>88130936>>88130952"Watch out or the beasta will behave like a beasta". Oh lord, Ignis Divine have mercy on me! Anything but that! 'Course any self respecting civilized person knows that it don't matter how you behave, a wyld-monkey will always be a wyldin'! It's only natural! For they are the results of unmentionable debauchery performed by the lowliet of Exalts, the Lunars! They don't know any better! Their craniums are too small to have room for rational thinking, for civilization!I pray every day for those good Solars and thank them for my life, for the air I breathe and that I wasn't reincarnated as a Threshhold-windchime or that I wasn't born with fur or withthree assholes.
>>88130742https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzitzimitl
>>88131154Unironically not an incorrect way for civilized peoples in Creation to be generally presented. The only real difference between beastfolk and wyld mutants is that beastfolk are associated with the Anathema, tend to be more violently anti-civlized folk, and are slightly less insane. In other words, they're Wyld Mutants except instead of having driven themselves mad and becoming something to be pitied, feared, and mercy killed on sight, they're instead active enemy combatants that decided in a rational state of mind that the thing their hearts wanted to do was to destroy the lives of civilized people, not for need of resources or for some hatred, but because they think civilized people are 'weak' and picking on the weak is moral.Having a perfect view into the other culture is unlikely, but there is cross-cultural transfer happening all the time, and it's mostly happening from the perspective of slaves being taken in raids from one side or the other, so the people from the other side are very unlikely to see the other people's culture charitably on description if they ever make it back to their own people. Beastfolk are the barbarian's elite and likely to be seen as barbarians are, but up to 11.
>>88131090Iscomay isn't Nexus or Kirighast, places directly linked to significant international trade routes from all directions or hodgepots of different ethnicities. It's about as useful a statement as saying "these guys might be foreigners" when the text never indicates that Iscomay's empire or janissary system is built that way. This isn't 1e where the scales are very small, after all.
>>88131301Beastmen unironically got the residual "suck" from the Lunars and their shitty loreIt's nice that some, like the snake-men can escape it
I don't really get why they have to up the diversity in the north though? The east and south have plenty of opportunities for darker skin tones and faces emblematic of Africa and South Asia / Americas. East and South are the two biggest playgrounds for games outside of the Blessed Isle that for some reason the artist seem to exclusively portray as white.
>>88131396Drawing parallels with modern IRL sociopolitical topics. IRL we have a lot of opportunities for different skin tones and ethnicities around the world as well, but the modern sociopolitical topic regarding ethnicity is when a person of one ethnicity is put into a place or culture that doesn't fit where the ethnicity is 'from'. Ethnically homogenous states goes against the side of that debate that the 3e devs are pushing, so we get a whole lot of generalised mish-mash ethinicities put into places they don't really fit based on how ethnicities develop based on our current understanding, with the idea that them not 'fitting' is the goal, so as to force players to think about key idpol points that support their argument. Thus the agenda is pushed.
>>88131396See >>88129990 To fat white nerds "diversity" means "things that piss off /pol/". They'd never refer to it as freaking the mundanes, but that's what it is. Writing up stuff set where black people have always been established as living in the setting wouldn't piss them off as much. Adding Native American looking characters to art (you know, like the people who live right next door in the Northeast and ought to reasonably show up as ethnic minorities) won't piss off /pol/ because they don't really give a shit about Native Americans. Adding hispanic or middle eastern countries would work, but given the "quality" of art 3e gets they would probably come off as either racist caricatures or tan white guys. So shoving as many blacks as possible (but never any other ethnicity) into the North is the only option left.
>>88131396Because WW did an oopsie with Harborhead and accidentally portrayed blacks in their native environment too accurately. Aka as South Sudan. And now they want to earn back some brownie points by jamming blacks anywhere they can to show "no we like blacks, see?"
>>88131318I don't think I've ever seen a 1E map with a scale attached where the scale was small, either.
>>88131689In fairness, there were setting elements in 1e that suggested the world was very small.
>>88131689Here's a map of the Haslanti League from Bastions of the North; it describes Shield as six hundred miles south of Crystal. This lines up with big world theory, where Creation is about the size of Earth.
>>88131835*it describes Shield as six hundred miles south of Crystal in the same book, a couple pages later.
>>88131835The scales on maps have always been big, but plenty else seems to suggest that the world was originally designed to be smaller and changed at the last minute. The Realm's army is the size of Rome's, consistent with an empire ruling a region the size of the Mediterranean, for example, rather than the size of China's. Paragon is planning a war with Gem, with apparently nothing in between them that needs to be conquered first. The Locust Crusade featured a few thousand soldiers conquering like a third of a direction with nothing but the named cities serving as important battles. The Guild being a single organization that spans the entire map, and many more.
>>88131714True, but I think those details are mostly about writers not thinking about the scale rather tgan about the world being written with a small scale in mind.>>88131835>>88131840There's also this http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/Thus_Spake_Zargrabowski/BigWorld statwment from Grabowski, which also supports the idea of the world having always intended to be large.
>>88131910These points are much more reasonable. Though, you could chalk up teh Realm's small army size to high quality and need to go sailing to get anywhere (no landlocked neighbours to bully) and the Realm's imperial legions being their exclusively foreign legions, with garrisons not counting towards the count. And you could say that the named cities are the biggest cities and therefore the most important and only ones really able to put up a fight when something like the Locust Crusade comes along. And if we're saying that the named cities are the big ones that you have to take notice of, the small players will get out of the way and Paragon v Gem war makes a bit more sense - the books do mention that armies typically have to cross many foreign borders to get anywhere, and effective diplomats are therefore a big part of force projection for everybody that's not the Haslanti League. Armies crossing borders without it being an invasion / occupation / needing to do the conquering to bull through is pretty normal in Creation, apparently.
>>88131621Same thing with Varang city states and Prasad.
>>88132025Who are those supposed to offend?
>>88132181Indians with their caste systems
>>88132330Why would a large and flourishing empire having a caste system offend real life people with a caste system?
>>88132549It is the VCS that is offensive, so they made Prasad.
>>88132619Do you have something to back that reasoning up?
>>88125832No, just the discussion around it.
>>88133736Yes, now even mercenaries are Exigents of mercenaries.
>>88132330Prasad has a caste system and so does Varang. They got rid of nothing.
>>88130882Iscomay doesn't have a lot of snow and cold though. They use geomancy to keep their lands warm, like how a lot of the far northern locations have a magical way to avoid being barren ice.
>>88131621What's wrong with Harborhead? I read some guy calling houses of the bull god racist once.
By default Dragon-Blooded are heavily indoctrinated into an anti-Exalted mindset (besides themselves of course). But Solars are much greater Exalted than DBs; shouldn’t a Solar with some experience be able to turn DBs do his or her side via charisma and overwhelming strength? Would such DBs be considered victims of mind-control? Just traitors promised great power in exchange for service to evil powers?Also how much do the Sidereals run the DBs? Just set up the system and let the DBs run themselves and only step in to make corrections occasionally? Constantly tard-wrangling them with the disappearance of the queen?
>>88139959In order:>Dragonblooded view the Anathema as demons, servants of chaos versus their own championing of social order. They don’t see the others as being ‘Exalted’ at all in most cases.>Yes a Solar could turn a Terrestial or even a house of Terrestials, or even the whole system to his aid. Playing politics to claim the Scarlet Throne is as valid as being a conqueror, but no less difficult. Said Terrestials would be viewed foremost as traitors or deserters, then as servants to dark powers. How hard it is varies by social rules/edition/the Terrestial in question.>Sidereals reply primarily on soft power. They designed the systems the Terrestials use, but those systems label the Sidereals themselves Anathema. They do find their influence more tenuous and their exertion more taxing as time goes on.
>>88139959>But Solars are much greater Exalted than DBsDBs can roll up to 16 dice, Solars can roll up to 21 dice. They're not that much better.
>>88139693It's pretty much just middle-afroca ome for one>be one of the oldest places with civilization in the world >literally achieved nothing in your entire fucking existence because your populace is too busy being stuck in a perpetual war between god only knows how many small tribes>the only real development your country has seen was made by white skinned devils from a foreign land>hate the people who taught you how to use irrigation and how to shit in a toilet but don't do anything about it because you're too busy hating your neighboring tribe, who have mostly the same culture and even religion as you>even if you managed to mount a unified resistance and drive out the white devils all that'd happen is you going back to living in mudhuts and stealing cows from each other
>>88140747The way I remember it was that Harborhead was a nascent empire before the Realm conquered it, and the locals - five large ethnic groups rather than countless tribes, right? - don't come off as primitive so much as warlike to me. I don't remember if this is outright in the book or just a fan explanation for Harborhead's problems, but I also think that Ahlat's worship is a part of the problem, while sinultaneously being a big part of Harborhead's strength abd the biggest thing tying the five major ethnicities of Harborhead together. Ahlat likes getting vast amounts of cattle sacrificed to him, which motivates cattle raids, which give rise to long-lasting feuds. This is all based on possible inaccurate recollections, though. I guess I'll take a look through Houses of the Bull God when I get back from work this evening.
Also just thought of something. Immaculate monks, the Terrestrial Exalted ones, come from a household of Terrestrials. Wasn’t sending their kids to the Order a mark of shame, ie, they were considered failures, useless, maybe a victim of infighting, etc? Then 10 years later he or she shows up to their family, now an Immaculate master, a supreme ass-kicker of incredible (to a DB) strength. How awkward would that reunion be? The Immaculate is probably completely indoctrinated into the Order and cares less than nothing about what happened in the past. But the family wouldn’t see it that way. If someone tried to mess with an Immaculate, would a monk participate or do everything possible to avoid meaningless fights? Maybe give them a shot to quiet the belligerent down / put them in their place but not seriously harm them? Depends on the elemental discipline? Like, would a Fire monk just lay you out and give you a gruff speech about the natural order, while a Wood monk just disarm and casually avoid you until you gave up?Also…mortal monks. Do they train as hard as exalted monks? Are we talking about Ip Man levels of kung-fu? Or are those guys not really combatants?
>>88140665I mean a solar can get up to 50 dice with all the dice tricks they have. I wish Holden and Morke were kicked out before they finished the core because just rolling dice is boring as fuck.
>>88140926Mortal monks sometime learn the terrestrial dragon styles. So they do train hard, it's just that they can't reach the level a DB can. Afaik there is at least 1 mortal among the 5 heads of the Order.And remember, the Immaculate Texts teach that mortals are working towards their future enlightenment in this life. So for mortal monks not giving their all in their studies would look quite bad in the order
>>88140926No. Becoming an immaculate monk isn't considered a shame. There are dragon blooded families like memnon's who dedicate a number of children to the order out of faith and adherence to the immaculate philosophy. Outcastes are forced into it or the military by default and then there are dragon blooded who feel compelled to be monks despite their family's wishes.
>>88140842No. It IS outright stated that Ahlat is responsible. At least in 2e. Because his prefereed sacrifice is 100 cattle, which would cripple any village. So they must raid each other constantly. Which is a genius move on his part as it makes his portfolio of War and Cattle strong as fuck, at the expense of mortals ever having a decent life in Harborhead
>>88140665At least in 1E and ExWoD, Solars get excess to scene-long persistent defenses and perfect powers that create a vast gap between the two. Also, that gap is gigantic narratively. Keep in mind that the gap between a person who is literally mentally retarded, and the greatest human genius to ever live, is 7-9 dice. A Twilight rolling 20 dice isn't twice as smart as the smartest IRL person, she's several orders of magnitude smarter. This is also reflected in the combat arena in the aforementioned editions. If you have a defense pool or trait 5 dice higher then your enemy, he'll rarely hurt you. If you have one 10 higher, he never will. Dice pool math curves are fun.
>>88141365>I mean a solar can get up to 50 dice with all the dice tricks they have.Only in Craft, which nobody cares about in universe or out.>>88141523>At least in 1E and ExWoDDon't care. Specify beforehand. 3e is the default.
>>88141560>3e is the defaultNo it isn't.
>>88141560>3e is the defaultShut up, Vance.
>>88141565>>88141728Nobody will ever play your dog shit editions.
>>88141740Everything 3e has is from nibbling at the corpses of it's predecessors.
>>88141740Tell us about your 3E campaign then. In detail.
>>88141847It's a 1 on 1 where my nerdy dynastic transgirl hatches from her egg AGAIN by exalting as a db. just a comfy slice of life where she gets to be a bi disaster
>>88141898You're so engrained in the culture war you learned words you hate, and strung them in a sentence and then shouted them out to everyone. To people who in most cases don't care what nonsense your spewing means. Why are you still alive when you clearly hate living.
>>88141898>tfw not sure if anon is fucking with me or not>tfw not sure which is worse, that anon is playing to the stereotype of 3E as a haven for deviants as a gag because he has no game, or anon really is a deviant and thinks his experience is how the game should work
>>88141765And it's the least unplayable of them all as a result.
>>88141437Ahlat's kind of a dick, even by the standards of the Creation's gods.
>>88141984Ahlat is one of the most bro-tier of the deities. He's one of the only major gods who does his job and mostly respects the celestial order. He also legitimately cares about his worshippers and his purview doesn't incline him towards values vastly different then a human being. He's just a brutish, warrior, cow guy. He doesn't even particularly like war, he just likes manly fighting. The second things go from 'fifty dues rustling cattle' to 'trench warfare' Ahlat becomes offended. As far as gods go you can do much, much worse.
>>88142011Huh? He's only avoided violating the orders on gods ruling in Creation by loophole and being powerful enough to crush most of his opposition, and some of his writeups make it pretty clear that he wouldn't hesitate much to go all the way, given how large and influential the Brides of Ahlat are, and mentions that it wouldn't be crazy to see him handing down orders to Harborhead or other places in the South personally. He's never described as giving a fuck about his worshippers, outside of maybe the Brides but even then not really; he cares that he has worshippers and that they're doing well, not about his worshippers.You're not wrong that you can do worse, but there are definitely many better.
>>88142053I'm going mostly by Games of Divinity and a few sources in 2E I can't remember. The impression I get of Ahlat is that of a boisterous, gregarious warrior god who wants men to fight bravely, looks down on militarized warfare as unmanly, rewards his blessed with immortality [of a sort], and 'mostly' holds to the old ways of noninterference except for where his pride or goodnature inclines him otherwise. His weaknesses are his blessed immortality is kind of shitty, he's technically a corrupt official taking bribes in hecatomb, and he's just a bronze age warrior with all that entails. He's the god who means well, whereas others are either self-centered assholes, very alien, or exceptionally brutal. The only gods I can think of who are better then Ahlat are Conky himself, the Golden Lord, maybe Fakharu, Lytek, and a few others. I definitely put him over absolute freaks like Siakal, alien horrors like some of the Maidens, or corrupt shitheads like Ryzala.
>>88142106Weird, my recollection of Ahlat is as an ambitious and unprincipled opportunist, like a corrupt career politician who also happens to be a warrior but prioritizes personal political gain over any kind of a warrior ethos. I guess I'll really have to re-read aome stuff once I'm home from work.
>>88142145I have not read House of the Bull God so maybe they paint him differently there. But I tend to picture Ahlat as pic related with a bull head from the descriptions I've read of him. Just a big warrior bro, mostly a good guy but definitely with his flaws and excesses.
>>881421062e South and Houses of the Bullgod writeups just left me feeling that he was a self-interested politician mostly interested in growing his political and worshipper-base and keeping them stable, undercutting the competition and implementing measures that kept people down on the level he wanted them for purposes of self-interest. The part where he's propping up a puppet god to take over the parts of his job that get scrutinized doesn't speak well to his goodliness, and the way he keeps killing his opposition and wrecking any concerted effort among mortals to make with the self-improvement train in ways that might maybe be troublesome for him down the line seems, again, self-serving. He hosts a lot of other gods and does the networking thing, but that seems more of a general politician greasing and divine luxury than a personal trait. I don't think he means well. Siakal's worse, but he's still an opportunist of the highest order.
>>88142162Yeah none of that is how I read him, but again I've not read House of the Bull God. I really hope that isn't a fair reading, since Creation has enough corrupt politicians and alien monsters. Ahlat as the Thor-like lughead is far funner then yet another of those. Have him be the guy who can't play politics for shit, or is taken advantage of, but still holds his position because he got it back where meritocracy was kind-of a thing. Have him be the guy whose on your side, but makes you squint at his occasionally stupid ideas or warrior ways. Make him put honor before reason. That's the impression the sources I read painted, like where they say he'd be a poor replacement for Conky as the Sun because of these kinds of reasons. 'Opportunist' or 'politically savvy' are the exact opposite of the words I'd use for him.
>>88141908>btw i'm on neither side i'm above it i swearYeah yeah we get it you're really cool, glad your table likes the precedent of rawar.
>>88142187That doesn't sound like any depiction of Ahlat I'm familiar with. It doesn't really conflict with his writeup in GoD, true, jut then thst writeup doesn't say much outright about his personality, and the political opportunist makibg a good use of that warrior image is also consistent with that writeup.
>>88142675Well lets look at a short list of facts about Ahlat>He's a war god, specifically noted as preferring tribal raiding that promoted valor over slaughter and militarized soldiering as represented by other war gods.>He reached his job meritocratically, as a result of valor and long service. >He is favorably inclined to the Unconquered Sun and to Solars.>He lives in a great hall, has an active social life, greets his enemies at said parties by name and keeps friendly relations, and has ostentatious tastes.>He grants his foremost followers immortality, holds a fatherly relationship to all his followers, and is intimately concerned for their well being.>He upholds the celestial order, doesn't take bribes outside the hecatomb, minimizes interaction with the mortal world, and submits all his questionable interference to his superiors for review>He's specifically noted as being a bad replacement for UCS in the event of the death of the Sun on account of these kinds of characteristics>He keeps a statue on his desk of his original form to keep him grounded and humble>He broke off a long-standing romance with a goddess because it was getting in the way of his producing sons for his people.All of these and more give the broad general impression of 'the big dumb honorable nice guy' much more then any kind of political schemer, and this has always been how I've read Ahlat. I even went back and checked House of the Bull God [turns out I did read the last chapter at one point and just forgot] and didn't see too much to contradict that vision.
>>88142769I don't think any, or almost, of those points say much about whether he's dumb, honorable or nice. I have some genuine difficulty seeing why those things would tell much about his personality. His purview as a god is a job, not a statement about his personality. Competence isn't a statement on personality, either. Liking the UCS and the Solars, also not such a statement. Being social does say something about him, but not about whether he's nice or honorable. I don't recall him being intimately concerned with his followers' wellbeing, but maybe I'll be corrected when I reread HotBG this evening. Not takng bribes except for the lavish and costly sacrifices that drove the people of the Harborhead to constantly raid each other is hardly a mark on Ahlat's favor.
>>88142275I use 1e lore for my games. I'm sorry you made yourself mentally insane.
>>88142841He's a bronze age war god. If you examine him long enough you'll find no end of reasons to be offended, both legitimate and nitpicking. All the points I just said give much more the impression of Thor then anything else. Is he moral? Its Exalted, that's a matter of intense debate by definition. If he a bro? Without question, its his defining trait. He's the Chad honorable manly war god who contrasts with the Athena and Khorne war gods.
>>88142769Some of these seem inaccurate extrapolations/readings of written content.>He reached his job meritocratically, as a result of valor and long service.He reached his job when he became a topic of the day and a celebrity took pity on him, going around the system to settle him in somewhere better because they thought he did a cool thing. His long service had very little to do with it. Then he was promoted again when he abused the shit out of his followers and domain in order to back the Unconquered Sun 110%. Neither promotion was meritocratic.>He grants his foremost followers immortality, holds a fatherly relationship to all his followers, and is intimately concerned for their well being.It's immortality in the same way that being forged into soulsteel is immortality; worse than the default that is reincarnation. He doesn't have a fatherly relationship with his followers, his followers are called 'sons' and 'daughters' but that doesn't say anything about how he actually treats them. He displays no intimate concern for their wellbeing, only concern in the abstract or on-the-spot when he sees something himself. He's very active in Creation and supportive of his followers insofar as they pursue his goals, if that's what you meant.>He upholds the celestial order, doesn't take bribes outside the hecatomb, minimizes interaction with the mortal world, and submits all his questionable interference to his superiors for reviewHe's probably the most active god in Creation outside Whitewall and definitely the most widely active, which isn't really upholding the celestial order. He takes bribes (Houses of the Bullgod pg75: "Thanks to an ongoing bribe, Ahlat continues to keep Swan Dragon's successor as Celestial Censor of the South, Wong Bongerok, permanently understaffed and on a tight budget."). I don't know where all of this 'submits everything to superiors' comes from, can't find a cite, but he's very much politicked hard to get where he is looking acceptable.
>>88142872I didn't say anything about being offended. Whether he actually is bro is the question here, but I don't think anyone's offended by him.
>>88142905>>88142905It says in multiple places "He mostly upholds the celestial order". His being 'active' doesn't change the fact most of his activities are legal. As to submitting actions to review its page 75 House of the Bull God, in the sidebar. But it is only talking specifically about maneuvers relating to war planning in particular contexts. To the rest of this, I'm not interested in arguing about Ahlat's character. Again, he's a bronze age war god and an Exalted character, he is not supposed to be clear cut. But he is also clearly and repeatedly intended to be the war god who fits the Thor mold of inspiring men to valor, being boisterous and gregarious and overall topping the 'war gods I'd get a drink with' chart. That doesn't necessarily make him a good person, its just his motif. >>88142942I don't mean modern-day political crap offended, I mean taking offense to his actions. There's alot of legitimate reasons to criticize Ahlat. That doesn't change the fact that everything about his depiction in canon gives the impression of the archetype that for lack of a better word I'm calling the Thor War god. He's the god of war as an exercise in manliness, heroism, and valor as opposed to a god of soldiering or a god of slaughter, and his virtues and his vices reflect that.
>>88142957>As to submitting actions to review its page 75 House of the Bull God, in the sidebar.That sidebar is pretty clear that he's questioning whether shady Sidereal interference is legal, not his actions in general. It also makes clear that he's doing it because he wants to seem neutral on the topic, and tries to keep things in the open because of his desire to keep the neutral stance, rather than out of adherence to the celestial bureaucracy or anything.And to the rest of it, sure. I was putting in counterpoints to the 'Ahlat is the most bro-tier god' argument because a lot of what was being said seemed incorrect or disingenuous, not because I thought he wasn't pushing the valor and warrior vibes. I do question the boisterous and gregarious descriptors. I read him as a political opportunist who's tired of the political game, and the part where he throws luxury everywhere as part of his way of handling heaven is just more of that political glad-handing he hates but feels the need to do, while he stress relieves in Creation among his followers who run regular colosseum-esque battles for his viewing pleasure.
>>88143031Well we've reached the point of the argument where the only addition to be made is that I've never read it the way you read it and reading Ahlat as a political schemer [beyond the necessary amount of politicking for a celestial god in this game period] seems just as 'incorrect and disingenuous' to me as what I'm saying does to you. To a certain extent these differences in opinion and character interpretation are intended to the setting, though I will reiterate my earlier point that I find your reading horribly boring. There's already so many gods who fit the politicking schemer or ambitious bueracrat mold. Having a few lovers, idealists, naive idiots, or inconvenient honorable Old Guard or so on serves to mix up the roster.
>>88143072>Having a few lovers, idealists, naive idiots, or inconvenient honorable Old Guard or so on serves to mix up the roster.I feel like half the upper-level gods we know about are in these archetypes, so maybe part of our different readings is simply that we want him to fill in the smaller side of Heaven.
>>88143147Honestly it was my first glance. He's a big muscular cow dude who likes manly men warring for valor and lives in a big hall with his favorite warriors. Before I saw anything else of him my first impression was 'okay he's the Gar god'
If Ahlat managed to make ALL Brides of Ahlat into Godblooded, would they kick the shit out of the Realm?
>>88143720Lmao no. All the DBs have to do is rape a few of them and they'll start killing each other
>>88143925One Thousand Godblooded elite warriors would kick the shit out of the Realm.
>>88144196There are fifteen thousand Brides of Ahlat, but they'd all be fighting as individual warriors and that would make an absolute mess of things. If the Realm armies are good at one thing, it's artillerying the shit out of massed up balls of disorganized warriors.There's also the part where Harbourhead's Brides would never be able to make the crossing over the Inland Sea to make it to the Realm in the first place, and also the part where all of their neighbours would instantly fall on them because of the Southern predilection for backstabbing Ahlat created, and also the part where godblood don't match up to Dragonblood at equivalent experience (and Dragonblood lifespan means they have more experience, too). After all that, there's still the part where Chejop Kejak calmly pulls Ahlat aside and tells him not to do that, what is he thinking, does he want his cult to be stuck with shit destinies forever? Even the Gold Faction doesn't want random idiots blowing up the Realm, and Ahlat is not Gold Faction aligned.
Time to make my 3e character
>>88144808Describe them in scales of one to ten.
>>88144279You assume far more competence for their enemies and too little confidence for their allies.
>>88144977No, he doesn't. Not really.Sure, the brides are powerful and they may be able to depend on the aurochs of Ahlat but that's it. Harborheadites don't know how to wage war. They know how tribal warfare works as they raid the shit out of each other fucking daily. But none of them know any weapon more advanced then a long stick with a pointy bit at the end, and shields. The Realm has firewands, siege weapons, Exalts, Celestial Martial Artists, Sorcerers and legions they can just dump on Harborhead. Even when you consider that Harborheadites know how to fight, they are mainly engaged in short skirmishes where they try to hit enemy tribes only for enough time to occupy them while some of their own dudes steal their cattle.The Realm knows how to wage war. Harborhead doesn't. Simple as
How big are the Elemental Dragons? They’re of the Terrestrial order so naturally on the bottom rung of the heavenly court, and they’re usually stuck on Creation. But, weren’t the Dragons massively pumped up on devotions, putting them on par or even greater than many Celestial deities?
>>88145095Depends on which edition you're talking about.In 2e they were not deities at all but Third Circle Devas of Gaia who resided in the elemental poles themselves. So yeah. Fucking strongAlso the immaculate texts specifically say you shouldn't pray to the Dragons as they are beyond that, so they don't get any worship. But neither do they need it
>>88145045Realm would eat each other alive sending people into that meatgrinder. All the Brides becoming godbloods of a war avatar would attract scores of Solars / Lunars from leagues around to bolster up their system.
>>88144855What scales?
>>88145095Even lesser elemental dragons aren't really the bottom rung of anything, and I think the actual Elemental Dragons are second only to the Incarnae in raw power. If you meant how big they are in terms of actual physical size, I don't remember if their size is stated anywhere, but I'd imagine they dwarf the already pretty big lesser elemental dragons. I'd assume them to be, like, mountain-sized at least.
>>88145095They are the elemental pools which are huge as fuck structures.
>>88142769So, I went and re-read the relevant part of Houses of the Bull God, and I have a hard time finding much to support your view on Ahlat there. He's described as a highly ambitious god who's planning to eventually supplant E-Naluna, the supreme Goddess of War, his current superior. Whether or not he takes bribes himself he's very much described as engaging in bribery. Notably he bribed the Jade Goddesses to place deposits of jade under Harborhead. He did not do this to enrich Harborhead, but in the hope that such a valuable resource would get people to fight over it, because he felt things were too peaceful and craved for some strife. I think this says a lot about the degree of care he has for the people of Harborhead. He also pays bribes to keep the office of the Censor of the South understaffed and underfunded. The current censor, Wong Bongerok, is a pretty corrupt guy, but the same thing was going on during the time of Wong Bongerok's predecessor, the widely respected Swan Dragon. I doubt there could be any other reason for meddling with legitimate supervisory authorities like this but to make sure Ahlat could do shady shit without getting audited. I see literally nothing hinting at him being a 'big dumb honorable nice guy'. It's pretty explicit that he's deeply involved and well-versed in divine politics, including the less-than-legal aspects of such politics, and it's explicit that he continues to look for ways to get ahead in life, even beyond his already lofty position.
BTW are there any celestial deities who can tell a Solar Exalted to get lost and boot him/her back out to Creation? Are they not, legally, supposed to do that but figure they’ll get away with it because the big bosses are engrossed in the Game?Also when the Immaculates show up at a Terrestrial spirit’s dwelling carrying baseball bats and giving out a speech about being a team player — can’t any of these spirits do anything except cuck? Are none of them strong enough to tell these monks to get lost? Do they all just have to surrender and seethe helplessly? Or is the promise of regular devotions enough of an enticement combined with the threat of a beat-down to make these spirits embrace team play with more acceptance?
>>88146288>Are there any celestial deities who can tell a Solar to get lost and boot him back out to CreationI assume you mean from Yu-Shan. Yes. Any. Except if they are an Eclipse or a Zenith, can't remember which, because those guys got diplomatic immunity.The rest of the Solars don't have ANY actual right to be in Yu-Shan. Creation is their domain. Yu-Shan belongs to the gods. Basically any Celestial God can just call Celestial Lions who'll "politely" ask him to fuck off>Can the Terrestrials do anything other than cuck?Play the long game. They feign submission and push the limits whenever they can. That's about it in areas strong with the Immaculate Philosophy.In areas where the order is weak, like the West or far enough from the Realm, the spirit can fight the Immaculates off if he's martially inclined. It's more of a problem in Realm territory because he doesn't just have to fend off the one or two monks that show up at his door. He has to fend off every single one that comes after he whooped two of them.Any Terrestrial deity (who aren't that powerful anyway except for a few of them) would have to face off against ever increasing number of dickheads who can hunt him down even in his sanctum. And even IF he manages to whole ass Immaculate Order then he's a big enough troublemaker for a few Bronze Faction sids to show up at his door.It's the analogy between the tree and the reed. What doesn't bend, breaks.It's simply much easier to play along and do things subtly.
>>88142942Let's say I'm a weird god who went and fathered a bunch of children just to use them as magical materials for artifact creation, and in the process of melting them down into metals - would I get soulsteel or starmetal?
>ahlat is a kind godWasn't one of his brides raped by a drunk dragonblooded and the rest of them beat her so badly she almost died and became an Abyssal with the soul purpose of killing them all and them him?
>>88147019Akuma, but yes
>>88146672Soulsteel. And it's not like it'd be any better than normal soul steel so it's just about the edge factor I guess.
>>88113033It's okay, having brain damage is the norm for /exg/.>>88127421>Sandact6He can't keep getting away with this!>>88139959Deebs are still Exalted.Honestly I can see why they started the "Dragons Actively Choose Dragon-Blooded Exaltations" meme on the official Discord to remind themselves that Deebs are Exalted, with the way they're talked about here.
>>88147675>Dragons Actively Choose Dragon-Blooded ExaltationsThat would imply all kinds of things, most of which probably end with someone holding a daiklaive to somebody's head and forcing them to Exalt as many people as possible.
>>88146173Like I said last night, we’re reading the same thing and coming away with wildly different meanings. I can’t see your understanding in the text. Him politicking doesn’t detract from his entire aesthetic and motif, especially when he’s much more upfront and by the books about it then 90% of gods.
>>88147756I'm sorry man I agree with the other guy. I haven't seen ahlat even implied to be a gregarious, fun loving guy anywhere, I've exclusively seen things like him organizing the south to be a perpetual blood drenched grudge match to get stronger and punishing his wives when they get raped. He's pro solar because they're a chance to get stronger, he ordered countless raids and wars as soon as the solars were released in the hopes the violence would cause more solars to appear in the south, where they'd likely favor him. He's not honorable, he advocates theft of cattle through stealthy, violent raids.
>>88148248And the best thing?He's pro-Solar because of all the bad reasons.He doesn't like the Immaculate Philosophy which wants to rein him inHe got his position of power thanks to the Primordial War where his perpetual violence engine accidentally became fertile soil for Exaltations to take root and became Conkys ally because of thatHe literally just wants to exploit the Solars to amass even more powerWere it up to Ahlat he'd turn the entire South into as much of a shithole as HarborheadHe's the exact kind of god that makes the IO doctrine popular and somewhat true. He's a parasite who exploits mortals and gladly throws them in a meatgrinder if it means expanding his portfolio
>>88148305>>88148248This kind of interpretation of Exalted characters annoys me, because on one hand it’s not unreasonable. Most gods in actual mythologies, like most heroes, are guilty of a tremendous number of things that if they weren’t gods would at least make them massively controversial if not outright wicked by many standards. To a point, the goal of Exalted is to strip away the sanctimonious veil and say “Zeus is a rapist and murderer and did a number of genuinely horrible deeds many of which he did only because he was Zeus and could get away with it’. But a lot of fans take that too far, to the point they conclude gods and heroes being gray means they’re all morally black, and that equally misses the point of Exalted. Which is that people are fundamentally people regardless of intellect and power, and that pulp heroes are both tremendously good and tremendously flawed, and both are more a result of their tremendous power amplifying flaws as their being in any way worse then ordinary people. I call it Jonas Venture syndrome, where a character is introduced as a good guy, shown to have tremendous flaws, and rather then conclude ‘the great hero has tremendous flaws and many of them are indefensible’ the audience concludes “he’s an evil bad man” and that’s the sun extent of their analysis. Interpreting Conkey as a lazy drug addict who abandoned his charges, viewing the god of valor and manliness who patrons heroes as some petty war criminals, viewing the Solars as tyrannical post-human monsters, it’s all boring. Not because the charges are entirely unfair, but because focusing on them to the exclusion of their heroism is as stupid as focusing on their heroism to the exclusion of their flaws and sins.
>>88147675>He can't keep getting away with this!But I already have
>>88148593The expectation is that you're going to play someone who got super powers and immediately thought they should run around freeing slaves for no personal gain, maybe with one token evil teammate. All the people with power are horrible so that you can justify murdering them and taking over yourself. Grabowski's idea of "grey morality" was that maybe it's evil to kill soldiers who are out committing genocide on random peasants, because if you kill someone aren't you just as bad?
>>88148725A blithering retard’s take. No the point is that if you examine any great historical figures life you’ll find endless things to complain about, many of which are horrible and legitimately horrifying. Alexander the Great was a drunk, Genghis stacked skulls, Solomon was a womanizer. Yet we idolize these people. The point is to reveal these people were not as perfect as we build them up to be. The problem is modern audiences are cushy urbanites with no sense for nuance and the minute a great man has one noteworthy sin or flaw they reclassifiy him as a bad guy. Because they’re retarded.
>>88148795What's Panther's great sin? That he used to be evil before his big redemption? Or Dace's or Swan's?
>>88148795What that anon said is a common "grey vs grey" writing problem.See Pakpao writer up.
>>88148829Panther you already stated. He was a gladiator and a killer. The others are less noteworthy but they’re also new heroes. Ask instead if Ma-Ha-Suichi or Chejop are “good people’ or not. The point in Exalted is that very few characters are entirely virtuous, especially those who preen themselves on it. Even the Unconquered Sun has a lot of actions you could condemn or question. But on the other hand very few characters are entirely wicker either, every prominent character is a ‘hero’ with some redeemable quality. I just can’t stand people who paint fictional characters black, like the only choices are ‘hero’ and ‘bad person’ when 99% of heroes and gods, real and fictional, have done at least one very very bad thing. Because when you’re that powerful, your sins take an epic scope.
>>88149000>I just can’t stand people who paint fictional characters black,Sorry anon but no amount of moral relativism will make Raksi or the Deathlords likable/sympathetic.
>>88149115>pointing out everyone has good and bad traits and few people are exclusively one or the other, or that power amplifies character flaws, is “moral relativism”I don’t have a smug or sarcastic enough anime girl for this brainlet take off yours.
>>88149143Yes, since these bad traits far outweighs the good.
>>88149178Are Gilgamesh, Achilles, Sun Wukong, Solomon, Julius Caesar, etc “bad people”? If so, should their accomplishments and praise being ceased because they’re “bad people”?
>>88149000>The others are less noteworthy but they’re also new heroes.Oh you mean the sample player characters are the ones who don't do evil things. Compared to the example DBs or Abyssals, who are usually horrible so that the PCs can kill them. Or the gods or raksha who usually do horrible things so that the PCs can kill them. It's not like you can say that's human nature and something you can't get rid of. You can literally murder all humans and make a better race to replace them with, like the original Mountain Folk.
>>88149303Exalted is a mishmash of conflicting themes. Take away what you want. When flattened and analyzed like a bugs entrails under a miscroscope, Exalted is psychopathic but so is most media sans something like Carebears (and you can squeeze madness from it as well if you want).
>>88149303>Try to make a Mary Sue with no in-genre flaws>Get Greated Cursed you insufferable out-of-genre moronAll you had to do was give your hero a temper or make him a womanizer, it’s not that hard. This is Conan not King Arthur. Oh wait, even the Knights of the Round were like this. Shocking.
>>88149349My Little Pony and Carebears are stories about people who routinely casually forgive barely repentant villains for trying to destroy the world.
>>88149358Il say this. Character flaws need the lightest of touches. If your there for a drama poetry slam, then yeah everybody acting like a dick can be fun for extended periods of time. But if you want more adventure, things like the Great Curse can just make literally every character into "That guy".>Sorry guys we can't go on adventures as I killed the king so now the next 6 sessions are about the ramifications of that.>Id like to help, but my great curse forces me to betray you.>Id like to be aware of the great curse, but it blinds me forcing me to punish both of you.>Id like to help resolve tensions, but MY great curse forces me to abandon the party.You can have great fun with character flaws, but with a very light touch. When everybody is a dysfunctional assholes, games are miserable unless your there for emo whine-jams.
>>88149204>Gilgamesh & Sun Wukong.Pre or post character development?>Rest.I don't have to abandon all morality to follow them.>>88149349Yes, specially the morality.
>>88149537>Pre or post character developmentDifferent Anon, but that is probably the one thing that rubs me the wrong way from Gabrowskis idea, that he doesn't want flawed characters:He wants characters with flaws to destroy them or develop into worse people then before.
>>88149583Yes, "We want greek tragedies, but only in suffering porn sense".
>>88148593I don't see how any of that applies to Ahlat, though. Some characters, sure. In particular I've seen some pretty ridiculous takes vilifying some of the more sympathetic Dragon-Blooded like Cynis Denovah Avaku and Tepet Arada. There definitely are plenty of Exalted characters who are both tremendously good and tremendously flawed. Not everyone is tremendously good, though, and this is fine. Ahlat's one of the characters who aren't really good but flawed. He's not a Deathlord-tier monster either, but he's a self-serving guy looking out for number one, not a bro or and embodiment of warrior honor. Not every god is depicted like this. Syndics are genuinely trying their best from what I remember, Bureau of Destiny has plenty of gods doing their jobs, Plentimon just gambles with willing opponents without cheating, and so on. There are also plenty of non-god characters who are pretty cool. Demetheus is a good guy, Panther and Jade have been getting better after their Exaltations, some Dynasts like Tepet Elena are pretty heroic, and so on. We're talking specifically about Ahlat's character here, however.
Incidentally, when I read HotBG I noticed that Kirighast is described as having 1,5 million people. Exalted's writers sure like those fuckhuge metropolises.
>>88146498>In areas where the order is weak, like the West or far enough from the Realm, the spirit can fight the Immaculates off if he's martially inclined. It's more of a problem in Realm territory because he doesn't just have to fend off the one or two monks that show up at his door. He has to fend off every single one that comes after he whooped two of them.This is actually underestimating the Immaculates. They aren't dumb, and have a lot of experience putting down uppity spirits. They're also not arrogant enough to walk into fights they don't have the upper-hand in, dicks swinging and completely idiotic about it. They're described as the opposite, if anything.A martial god who can beat up a Dragonblood doesn't have one or two Dragonblood showing up to tell them to stop being a shitter. They get an entire hearth of Immaculates shoving in their front door. At the minimum, bullying a terrestrial god of any power needs an occultist who can get you into the spirit sanctum, a fighter who can fight the god, and a social character to defeat them with words. When Dragonblood are roving around the place, they're also usually doing so in groups, and if you have any experience with a player hearth you'd know how hard it is to break them up. They'll do everything together up to and including dig latrines if they can.The issue with being a terrestrial god is that you are, by definition, local. Dragonblood aren't. They get to show up in force, gather resources from far away (allies, etc), and typically have weight to throw around that makes life difficult for you and which you can't really retaliate against if they decide to just hang back and, say, bribe merchants not to sell to your cult and convince local lords to purge your influence. The biggest terrestrial gods have this problem less, but it's still a problem for them.>>88148593We're saying that people are attributing positives to Ahlat that don't exist, not that there are negatives that outweigh them.
>>88156072Iirc those are mostly the Realm troops garrisoned there to tardwrangle the retarded harborheadites
>>88156388>They're also not arrogant enough to walk into fights they don't have the upper-hand in, dicks swinging and completely idiotic about it.They kinda do though. At least the zealots who drank the koolaid. Thinking you're appointed by god to fix things does that to you
>>88156453Not pictured: several invisible water-aspects grappling the god into the water.
>>88156392I really doubt the Realm has enough troops garrisoned in any single satrapy to make up most of the population of a city that size. I don't think Kirighast's writeup inplies it to be the case, either. It's stated that there are two separate, walled sections in Kirighast that are pretty neat places to live in, the Old Town where the king and rich locals live and the section where the Imperial garrison and officials are, and a large, poor slum in between these two wealthier sections.>>88156453There are hotheads everywhere, but by and large Immaculates are well aware of there being things more powerful than an individual Dragon-Blooded.
>>88156072Nothing wrong with that. Creation's infrastructure in cities is a lot better than ours was at the comparable time, going by population (~500mil was ~16th century). Their roads are pretty awful compared to ours, but their ability to clear out huge swathes of land and turn it into farmable area, keep it better maintained, get more use out of it, and all of that stuff leads to them being able to go tall better than we were IRL. There's also the part where the wilderness in Creation is way, way, way, way more hostile than it is IRL, and expanding is really tough because of it. Artisan work is also worth a lot more in terms of tangible benefits in Creation than it was IRL, which benefits from centralization too.Creation being mostly a world of big walled cities filled with the highest-density production they can pull off, with everything outside being either hard-bitten 'rural' farmers with absolute shit lives or barbarians, seems pretty fitting to me.
>>88156846I don't think their urban infrastructure is really better, in most places, really better. Why do you think it is? Wilderness is more dangerous in some places but not everywhere, and I don't think it is that dangerous in Harborhead.
>>881571901e developer commentary talking about how Creation's architectural standards are modern+, even in the Age of Sorrows, plus their advantages through thaumaturgy (anybody can see the benefits to astrology and weather-working and the art of husbandry, surely?), and the unique resources that come from clustering around and having access to places with strong geomancy. They also have the bonus that is an entire extra growing season for ~50-100% extra time to grow food per year compared to us, which makes agriculture really productive. They also get rewarded by artisan work being more mechanically advantageous because it leads into stuff like psuedo-artifact Talismans, sorcery, and the research and proliferation of thaumaturgic rituals, as well as the more mundane artisan work attracting powerful individuals like divinities or Exatled, so fueling their artisans is worth more. Basically: They have better access to what it requires to go metropolitan, and they are more immediately rewarded for doing so.
>>88157190>Wilderness is more dangerous in some places but not everywhere, and I don't think it is that dangerous in Harborhead.oh and uh this is just really underestimating how much of a death world Creation is. Mortals survive because they're backed by a whole lot of groups, because they're smart and good at fortifying themselves and avoiding getting under the feet of giants, and because they're a heck of a lot better than humans IRL. They can't go logging, because they're stopped by the Dogs of the Wild, for a very quick teaser on why civilization has trouble expanding. The East is the only hospitable place for regular travel, but in the East there are a bunch of parasitic creatures that'll infest you as a trojan horse that kills your village if you go wandering in the woods, Heart Wasps for starters, and a huge variety of more generally deadly wildlife that'd be more than happy to, for instance, kill you, steal your voice, and use your voice to lure out and isolate your fellow man. In the North you have to deal with endless cold, which is deadly enough, but there are also creatures running around like, say, carnivorous furred ape-men that see you as food. In the South you have to deal with endless cold, but also and probably more dangerously your fellow man is much more likely to run in behind you and backstab you while you're weak at home. In the West, well. There's a lot if you decide to go out on the water, obviously. Also, the dolphins are smarter than the average mortal. Everywhere has various more local threats on top of all this, of course.The only place the wilderness isn't dangerous is where it's been tamed and isn't wilderness anymore, which only happens around civilized areas, which aren't common and are tend to be clustered around the big rivers and seas, where ships roam and can have control.
>>88157499There are all kinds of monsters around, sure. And then there are all the places without such monsters. You're vastly overestimating the dangers of the Creation, or at least how widespread those dangers are.
>>88157799Where are the places without dangerous weather conditions, or monsters roaming the countryside wilderness, outside of the Blessed Isle? Everywhere I can think of outside of constantly maintained bits of civilization have monsters that can and probably will grab you if you go out into the metaphorical woods after dark. I think you're wildly underestimating the dangers of Creation, and how widespread they are.
how exactly has the realm not conquered Azure.
>>88148248>punishing his wives when they get rapedWhile I agree with most of what you've said it's worth noting MoEP Infernals invented that part Scavenger Sons says of the Brides of Ahlat-"They normally take prisoners, but if any of the opposing army is known to have harmed or defiled a captive guardswomen, the guard brutally tortures and slays all the prisoners to assuage the anger of Ahlat."
>>88157905Where they don't exist? Nowhere. Where they aren't numerous enough that they offset the advantages of magical and divine blessings to help civilization grow? Only in places where humans don't live in large numbers anyway. Elementals are kept in line by local spirit courts who want humans around for worship. Raksha die from being in Creation and so rove out from Wyld zones in small numbers. Deadly wildlife isn't a problem on a societal level. It's all there so that your circle can happen to run into it and punch it in the face.
>>88158884Tthere are more spirits than just elementals that don't want humans expanding into their territories. Dogs of the Unbroken Earth, for one. Also, spirit courts are very much not always going to back humans. Many spirit courts are not filled with gods of humanity. You can get support from gods that support humanity in affairs like the ones you're describing, but consider that having to pull together the offerings and sacrifices necessary to get them to work on your behalf is another barrier to entry to expanding cities outward, and not one that's guaranteed to work. The idea that human worship good = spirits support humanity is very silly. If you try to bridge a river, disregarding the nymph who lives there, you're in for a world of unpleasantness and your bridge won't stay standing long. Try to retake land that's gone without human maintenance for more than a century, the Dogs of the Unbroken Earth show up to defend it, or kill you for tampering with it. Wood Spiders love to hang over the roads and trails you need to tie expansions together. When you skip building to go conquering cities into empires, the city gods take offense, and they often have a lot of connections to network against you. Also, the Bureau of Nature has a lot of power and is well able to check the advances of the Bureau of Humanity. Expansion is not easy, in Creation. Celestial Exalted can often trample over the issues with it, but for most others it's fret with diplomacy and often easier and safer to build up what you've already taken.Also, deadly wildlife is absolutely a fucking danger, even on the societal level, holy shit, have you read any of the bestiaries and seen how common they're supposed to be? They regularly talk about how so-and-so creature regularly wipes out villages and forces taboos and cultural shifts just to deal with them. Heart Wasps, Chakra Orchid, sea serpents, devineko, desert basiliscs, nymph's blood, snakebud trees, etc.
Need Liminal Exalt concubine
>>88148593My dude. Ahlat is not a god of valor and manliness. He's a god of raiding and cattle. The themes you apply to him don't seem to have a basis in any material. I'm sorry dude I really think your characterization of him lacks textual support.You want him to be thor but complex? Run him that way. Ahlat is, as far as I can see, written as a career minded, goal oriented god of a violent purview, notable for his creativity. Because of his purview his resourcefulness has led to enormous bloodshed. I'm not reducing him by saying any of this. I'm sure he's also silver tongued, excellent at avoiding unsavory topics in conversation, hosts charming, surprisingly genteel parties etc. But none of that is textual.I'm not ignoring ahlat's heroism, I simply haven't seen ANY.
Honestly the dumbest thing I want to do is convince V'neef to just pull a Prasad in the West. Just take her family, any Tepet willing to follow her, and any Lost Egg she can get her hands on and pick an island to rule over.
>>88159749Yes, there are areas that are fantasy Australia on steroids. That's not all of the Creation, though. Even in the areas with plenty of dangerous shit it's not a goven that more beneficial supernatural factors don't balance things out. If you read the various location writeups, it should be pretty clear that the Creation is far from a deathworld. If anything, the opposite is kind of true, with people finding ways to thrive to an unreasonable degree even in some of the more inhospitable corners of the Creation - see Gem with its million or so inhabitants in the far South, the Haslanti in the North or the Haltans in a fae-filled region where ground is off-limits.
>>88160222Rather than dumb, that sounds like a really smart move for any Great House that doesn't feel confudent in its ability to survive the coming civil war.
>>88160222>>88160267Peleps wants to do this.
>>88160222V'Neef's a pretty poor candidate for anything but having a protagonist aura in terms of splitting off to make a new nation like Prasad. House V'Neef's just too tiny, and it is where it is because of blatant favoritism from the Empress. V'Neef herself is only sixty, and the entire house descends from her, which puts a pretty hard cap on how big it can be. House Peleps is the one I reckon could split off to make something independent in the West. Big navy, they finance the imperial fleets, and the only reason they're not the biggest merchant fleet is because Ragara is Guild Lite and because Peleps were banned from making money off the merchant navy when the Empress handed them to V'Neef. Breaking free of the Empress' strictures and doing their own thing would likely improve the situation for House Peleps in the short term, rather than wreck it like it would for most houses, and that's something they could use as leverage to set up properly in the West.
>>88149000I get your point but the only information we have about fictional characters comes from their authors, and some of those characters don't have a broad array of good and bad things they've done. Some are Siakal. Some are ahlat.Incidentally:>>88148795I think Solomon's problem eas that everything he had was a gift from God, but he started sacrificing to the idols of the women he married later in life. So not so much his polygamy was the problem, more how he let it change him.
>>88160386House V'Neef is tiny by Great House arandards, but as if 3E newly minted Great Houses tend to adot a whole bunch of promising Outcastes and patrician families with Dragon's blood, and V'Neef still has probably at least a couple of hundred of Dragon-Blooded.
>>88160502>arandardsThat is, of course, supposed to be "standards".
New to the setting but interested in running a game for my regular group I'd like to run the game based around Wu-Jian. What are the best books for information and are there any published campaigns based in Wu-Jian?
>>88160502>V'Neef still has probably at least a couple of hundred of Dragon-Blooded.She's sixty years old. Considering that the big thing she's selling is high bloodline potency, so she can't just do the thing where that one lady pumped them out back-to-back, the most she could have is around fifty descendants. Decent point adopting, but there aren't that many Lost Eggs and they still need to be folded into the family proper. She might be over a hundred altogether, but I doubt she's even a third the size of one of Prasad's houses in Dragonblood numbers. House V'Neef might be as wealthy though, with all the advantages she's been given to boost the nascent house.>>88160540Wu Jian is new to 3e, so the content for it will all be in 3e. There's the writeup in Core, there's a writeup in Exalted Essence, but the best write-ups will be in Heirs to the Shogunate, which describes House Nissar, the Dragonblood cadet house ruling the island city, and in The Realm, which has a more general description of the city.
Honestly I don't see V'neef living no matter what she does; eventually her house is going to be cannibalized by another stronger one and she's going to die, either by the hands of a distant cousin or more likely Mnemon or Ragara.Perhaps refusing to play the game and move out west might improve her chances for survival.
