#Exalted

1 messages · Page 6 of 1

tulip folio
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So most of her 'other alchs' trouble is directly his fault

bleak hazel
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you can use excellent quality equipment on that heal roll, so an int 5 craft 5 sid with the exqual tools they should already have for Crafting averages ten health levels restored

chilly sluice
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That's just how Sid charms are

bleak hazel
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Sid Craft is a really good tree but sadly they aren't actually great at making artifacts

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they can make 3-dots consistently and 4-dots a bit over half the time, which is miserable by celestial standards until they hit E5, at which point they can literally set up an artifact 3d printer

chilly sluice
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Meanwhile Sidereal Medicine is mostly about mercy killing IIRC

tulip folio
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...I have a very silly pondering.

bleak hazel
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the 1 month 5-dot is nuts, nobody else can do that

tulip folio
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So Alchs lack Mastery.

bleak hazel
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but below E5 they're barely better crafters than deebs are

tulip folio
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Which means Silver Voiced Nightingale is stuck at 'mundane weapon, not artifact'

bleak hazel
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they just have giant piles of grab-bag crafting effects that make it a considerably better tree to use

tulip folio
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'Deploy The Amplifier'

image.png
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'My mundane weapon produced: Voice'
'Material Synthesis (Sound)wave Emitter'

bleak hazel
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I feel the mundane version of that is one of those high-pitched whining devices to deter loitering teenagers

tulip folio
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I'm not 100% sure it works Rules As Intended but I also think 'You can mimic this one specific mastery for 2 motes per turn with an extra charm and 2 submodules' is likely not going to break the game.

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Vibrational Crystal Array
Cost: 3m; Mins: Strength 2, Essence 1
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Augmented, Dual
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None
Adamant resonators implanted over the Alchemical’s hands and wrists cause her weapon to vibrate at so extreme a frequency that it cuts through steel like air.

The Alchemical’s attack ignores (Strength/2, rounded up) points of soak and Hardness.

Submodules
Piercing Frequency (3xp; Strength 3): The Alchemical waives the Initiative cost and Defense penalty for making a piercing attack (Exalted, p. 586).

Sonic Drill Pulse (3xp; Strength 3): If the Alchemical negates all of an enemy’s soak or Hardness, any excess points of reduction are converted to damage dice, maximum (higher of Essence or 3).

Resonant Frequency Modulation (3xp; Strength 4, Essence 2): The Alchemical ignores an additional point of soak or Hardness for each attack roll extra successes, maximum (Strength/2, rounded up).

Matter-Tunneling Frequency Shift (6xp; Strength 5, Essence 3, Resonant Frequency Modulation) (+1wp): Against a lower-Initiative enemy, the Alchemical can pay a one-Willpower surcharge to remove Sonic Drill Pulse’s limit on extra successes.

'I have made the sounds soundier'

bleak hazel
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that both sounds like something an Exalt should be able to do and like a Silver Age comic book character

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ah, I see the craft tree also includes the Make Bad Decisions charm

image.png
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I'm so good at fateweaving guys, I just had to let Ligier take a week off

tulip folio
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'Look, he said he had to attend a wedding'

coral wraith
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that's fine. I'm sure that carries no consequences

tulip folio
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Also: God Dammit. One of the other players showed off the armour they worked out with the GM.

Preventing a Thousand Workplace Deaths (Silk Armor, Artifact **** (Requires Autochthonian Artifice))
A point of civic pride for Vos-Ulos, Preventing A Thousand Workplace Deaths was the first true, Autochthonian artifact produced by the city-state, a combined effort of multiple God-Blooded, elemental mutants, and a dragonblooded. It is a latex bodysuit into which wirewool has been woven alongside strands of black, blue, and green jade; alongside an adamant mask with an elongated lower half under carefully crafted lens. The mask can be removed, but contained within the cone of it are advanced filtration systems, and the lenses are carefully enscribed with sigils of Osha, the subminister of workplace safety and child of Runel.

Tags: Silent, Special

Special: As a reflexive action, an attuned wearer may examine an area of work or study for hazards in violation of established workplace safety rules; she automatically determines the area for the hazard, what type of hazard, and how it can be most efficiently fixed. This provides a non-charm success to resist Enviromental Hazards for the wearer and a non-Charm die for the same to their allies.

They made the OH&S armour.

bleak hazel
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(since when did Silken Armour need First Age?)

tulip folio
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I think it's in this case it's stuff like 'advanced filtration systems' and 'heads up display lenses'

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More than the armour itself

next delta
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You'll want some intimacies towards your circlemates

tulip folio
dense verge
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chejop falls squarely in the category of awful, sad old man that i tend to make so despite the bullshit around him having had stats in 2e, i do like him being the physical embodiment of the establishment maintaining the status quo for the sake of the status quo

prisma sun
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I do think that like

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solidly casting the Sidreals and DBs as the actual protagonists during the Usurpation does a lot for his character

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weirdly enough

tulip folio
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Instead of 'Everything was wonderful UNTIL THE FIRE DBS ATTACKED' solar focus?

prisma sun
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yeah

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like

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Even the Unconquered Sun went "nah they deserved it"

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I feel like that's literally as an objective view on morality as you get

prisma sun
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I really gotta find a good name for this Sid

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I rotate him enough but he doesn't have a good name yet

bleak hazel
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I'll be honest I really love all the elder sids this edition apart from Rakan

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Chejop has a bit more going on and is also not seriously expected to be deployed, so his sideline in being an utterly terrifying god of martial arts can be a cute lore thing while the role of Sidereal Heavy Mob is filled by Anys Syn

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He gets to sit in the corner and look over all his mistakes

tulip folio
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That's a full time job

bleak hazel
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yep

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although the factional conflict is less sharp in 3e so he does have meetings with and give advice to the Golds as well as young Bronzes

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very possible for any Sid to have received martial arts training from The Big Man before his impending untimely demise

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I'm running some mock battles to test the system out before I GM it and it's kind of fun to play Exalted Thunderdome

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especially at lower levels, one Deeb Vs three murder emus was quite entertaining

tulip folio
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Murder Emus?

bleak hazel
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The serious name is "death moa" but it's an emu

tulip folio
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Well, they are machine gun resistant.

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How well do low level exalts do against non-exalted foes in 3e? Seems like you can go further with like 'I have an excellency and a dream' than you could in 2e (Where you'd go nowhere and die fast).

bleak hazel
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I haven't done many high level mock fights yet but I am told that the best way to handle a combat optimised Dawn is literally to throw two entire parties of deebs at him in close succession because four or five deebs will die to his opening super mega combo but will force him to actually use the mega combo

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Low level non-exalts vs weaker Exalts is very fun

tulip folio
bleak hazel
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90% of dawns are going to be totally shredded if they run at that alone, it's only the 10% that are optimised enough to literally kill everything within arms' reach that can sweep it

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you kind of get the plot of the film Hero

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A solar that either can't spin attack every Deeb in close range to death or has already done that and burned all their motes will be very slowly worn down by 3-4 Deebs beating on them

tulip folio
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...now I'm imagining a dawn burning his 'murder everything to death' combo on a sorcery-crafted illusion and realizing how screwed he is.

bleak hazel
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(or, if they're not in the super charop leagues, just get kicked to death by two, being outnumbered sucks when everyone's tapped and they're regenning 10-15 motes to your 5)

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As for the low level stuff, most of the fighty first circle demons and undead have enough buttons to press to be interesting

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normal human soldiers who have nothing but stock attack aren't particularly fun opponents by themselves but that's why they're in battlegroups with officers putting big withering on all the PCs

tulip folio
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Nods

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So if the Twilight gets a Blood Ape running at him, it's a genuine 'this could be a problem'

bleak hazel
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well, they'd have to be a pretty wimpy Twilight

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a non-combat starting Deeb though, he's in a real tight spot

tulip folio
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Yeah, I was thinking like 'I have some skill ranks and an excellency' in this context.

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Someone who's not combat specced by any metric

bleak hazel
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Solar low level combat charms are sufficiently nuts that low level opposition is quite easy to trivialise with maybe four or five charms and reasonable stats

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even two charms would probably do easy for the blood ape, since Solars can just dice pool their way through the problem

tulip folio
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I do recall in 2e that Blood Apes were actually pretty bad despite fluffwise being 'The combat first circle' becuase they made the mistake of having high strength and medicore dex. That was always sad.

bleak hazel
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not so for deebs and the squishier Sids (and Lunars, theoretically, but "I am a bear now" covers for low stats pretty well)

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The big thing low level Solars get is a dirt cheap universal Onslaught negator so they can't be beaten into the ground by a few chumps stacking it

bleak hazel
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Principle of Motion flurried punches are pretty mean for anyone without said universal Onslaught negator and a high base defence

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Also, got a very good demonstration of why officers are terrifying from this fight of MHS vs 5 starting Solars, where Suchi commanded his beastmen, got 15 successes and did this:

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The Bear Guard fire arrows with Willpower (3). 11+3 dice gets 5 successes +1+3+15= 24 successes. All the Solars are hit. (10+Threshold Successes-Soak) dice +18 successes in Initiative damage.

tulip folio
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ooof

bleak hazel
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Five crashed Solars, including one pretty optimised dawn

tulip folio
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The Alch 'do more onslaught' charm is interesting. Against onslaught negators it won't do much I suppose but it's kinda cute in how it works.

bleak hazel
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Five of said dawn probably wins but honestly at that point fair enough

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"bring literally a sixth of all existing dawns, all heavily optimised" is allowed to solve that one

tulip folio
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Yeah, you h ave made 'murderhobo brigade'

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The Alch onslaught charm is fun, as it goes 'Oh yeah, onslaught now applies to attacks and soak. And it doesn't refresh turn to turn, it just keeps stacking up.'. (With the submodules)

bleak hazel
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A lot of penalty negators work on a wider category of stuff and are "pay one mote per point of penalty" rather than Dipping Swallow "1 mote to remove the lot"

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so you're good against most targets

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and I can see the constant burn there being really obnoxious

tulip folio
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...yess, I found the Rocket Punch charm.

# 
Subluminous Onslaught Missile
Cost: 2m; Mins: Dexterity 2, Essence 1
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Dual
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None
High-pressure steam lines and bulbous Essence capacitators in the Alchemical’s forearms accelerate projectiles to incredible speeds as she fires across long distances.

The Alchemical extends a ranged attack’s range by one band, maximum long. If the attack benefits from aiming, its range is increased by two range bands instead.

With Dexterity 5, Essence 3, the Alchemical may pay a one-Willpower surcharge to remove the limit on an attack’s maximum range.

Submodules
Kinetic Launch Catapult (3xp): The Alchemical can use this Charm with close-range weapons, letting her launch them out to short range. This uses the normal combat Ability for that weapon. This includes narmed attacks: the Alchemical can launch her limbs using multi-directional rockets, retractable metal cables, or similar mechanisms. It’s also compatible with weapons deployed using Integrated Arsenal System (p. XX).
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2m for +1 rangeband (2 if you're aiming) and the submodule makes it work with melee weapons

tulip folio
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2 motes instead of 1 but still, complete negation.

bleak hazel
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They have Solar level multiattack too, they're mean

tulip folio
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Interesting change from 2e where Alchs were...not great. They had a couple of things they could do but they suffered from 'You're not a Solaroid'

upper stratus
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the main thing i remember from 2e alchs was that they had too many weird little tidbit mechanics that made them just kinda annoying

tulip folio
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The big issue i had in 2e was that 'swapping out charms' wasn't really a super feasible thing.

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Like you could in-theory do it.

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But they did more with 'extra charm' and less with 'submodule'

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And you needed a full setup to swap out any charms

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So the Exalt Gimmick didn't really...work

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In 3e they give a hefy discount on charms and let the swapping out take 'a couple of hours' if you're just doing a couple.

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With you able to even swap them out without a lab if you've got a Really Good Engineer who Cares About You.

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So it's clearly designed to make 'Hey, got a problem here...I'm gunna quickly head back to the airship and get some adjustments made to help solve this' viable

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LIke they had 'power level wasn't great' issues too in 2e but the big thing was that the Mechanical Area They Had That Was Unique didn't work, which is a much greater crime imo

spring lynx
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he knows full well his death is anything but untimely

prisma sun
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Reeds Rush Ever Outward
River Breaks Dam
Brook Rests Upon The Bank
Drifts In Gossamer

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Which of these sound good

clever steeple
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Hmm

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I like fourth the most

chilly sluice
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I like Brook Rests Upon The Bank

dense verge
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Drifts, Drifts in Gossamer, thats good

bleak hazel
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I need to make Sid Whiplash, the Sidereal brawl Live Wire facetank enjoyer, but I'm not sure if you can use Brawl defensive charms if both your hands are occupied by whips

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all the charms I want take place on the damage roll rather than the attack roll, but I'm not sure how this works

next delta
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Just block with your feet

bleak hazel
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wait no they're all Versatile, so they all work with Martial Arts

upper stratus
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legs is unarmed

bleak hazel
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never mind, Sid Boxing is a go

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the whips are just for the stat bonuses, he's wrapping those around his hands and beating the hell out of people

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Hostility Acceptance Technique in heavy armour is one of the charms of all time

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no idea if it's good but if they don't have big overwhelming I can see it making it really hard to chip you down

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stack a few bonuses to mote efficiency so you can afford to keep your chin tucked in

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"I thought you people were meant to be sneaky"

"nope, I saw this thing about a knight once"

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oh no, "weapon compatible with that ability"

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gah, this will be tricky to finagle

prisma sun
bleak hazel
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actually there's very little in the way of Mastery stuff on this martial art

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I could do this with a Lunar

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it would be more flexible and taps into all the amazing grapple stuff Lunars have but it wouldn't have such wonderful Rocky energy because you don't have the "fuck you I don't take withering damage" charm

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also not sure what you'd shapeshift into to make this better

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Deadly Beastman war-form, probably

prisma sun
prisma sun
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How would you run Sans as a Deathlord

tulip folio
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...hey, am I right in this interaction of charms?

# 
Additionally, while in this form, the Righteous Devil can use firewands effectively in close combat, using the butt or handle of a flame weapon to effectively bludgeon enemies. When used in this way, they are treated as medium weapon with the bashing, martial arts, and shield tags. Firewands with an affixed bayonet instead have the lethal tag. While this use is not compatible with effects that specifically modify ranged attacks, such as the range extension of Blossom of Inevitable Demise, it can still benefit from other Charms of this or other staff or spear compatible styles.

Righteous Devil Form would allow you to use Wood Dragon charms with Firewands.

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As it's able to benefit from charms of 'other staff or spear compatable styles'

prisma sun
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Yeah

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But probably not whilst shooting

tulip folio
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I was 100% imagining point-blank shot that kills the other guy's soul, rather than Real Ranged.

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(And honestly, likely not worth it with just how much Righteous Devil is full of Terrestial on its charms so it's likely not a good one for Dragonbloods)

prisma sun
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Yeah the core book hates DB

dense verge
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this is why i don't very much care for the terrestrial keyword

tulip folio
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Oh no, Holden snuck in the back and put terrestial on all the immaculate martial arts when nobody was looking!

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😛

wise ocean
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some of them do exist for good reason

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I asked Misc if my fancy artifact gun could let me ignore soak with the righteous devil thing as if terrestrial didn't exist there and he went no

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only after reading the rules more did I come to Understand

tulip folio
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Also: I think I've realized an area where Alchs are actually better than Solars. It's also an area Lunars are better than Solars.

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Using Siege Weapons.

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An artillerist rolls ([Intelligence or Perception] + War) to attack with siege weapons. Strength isn’t added to their withering damage. The artillerist can only enhance this attack with offensive Charms that either:

• Enhance War rolls;
• Add dice to firing rolls, such as Immortal Commander’s Presence (Exalted. p. 420); or
• Are compatible with ranged attacks made using any Ability.

Attribute-Based Exalts: "Compatible with ranged attacks made using any ability, you say?"

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...what the hell happens if an Alch grabs the charm from an Artifact Siege Weapon with their 'I can learn an evocation for myself instead of the weapon'

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Collapsing Point of Destruction
Cost: 15m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: Decisive-only
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: None
After a turn spent aiming, an implosion bow’s master can use this Evocation to fire on a point out to long range. She rolls a single unblockable decisive attack roll against all characters within short range of the impact point, both allies and enemies. Battle groups and trivial characters are automatically hit, regardless of their Defense, on any result but a botch.

Each character hit suffers base decisive damage equal to the attack’s threshold successes. Divide the attacker’s Initiative evenly among them to determine the total damage, rounding up. An enemy that takes any damage is knocked prone and dragged one range band towards the center of the vortex. An enemy that dodges the attack by 3 successes or fewer suffers a tactical disadvantage even though they’re able to avoid the blast, suffering (Essence) dice of unsoakable withering damage. The artillerist gains all Initiative reaped by this attack. As long as one enemy is hit, the attacker is reset to base Initiative (plus any gained by making this attack).

The bodies of enemies incapacitated by an implosion bow’s blast are destroyed utterly, drawn into the collapsing vortex and disintegrating within, leaving behind only artifacts and other indestructible items. Scenery, mundane structures, and unattended objects within range are also drawn into the vortex, suffering uncountable damage (Exalted, p. 205), leaving behind difficult terrain.

This Evocation can only be used once per scene unless reset by remaining in place without taking any movement actions for three consecutive rounds as the implosion bow recharges. If the attuned character suffers Initiative Crash, any built-up power is lost, and she must spend another three rounds motionless to reset this Evocation.
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Like this on 'Yeah, I don't need a siege weapon I have this charm personally' would be...weird.

prisma sun
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Well what's the rule for the "you're the artifact" now?

tulip folio
# prisma sun Well what's the rule for the "you're the artifact" now? 
Transcendent Multimodal Artifact Matrix
Cost: —; Mins: Wits 4, Essence 1
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Omnitool Implant
A complex assembly of alloyed magical materials is woven across and throughout the Alchemical’s body, transforming her into a living artifact.

When the Alchemical undergoes the Rite of Reconfiguration, she may “install” Evocations that she’s awoken from her attuned artifacts or hearthstones in her Charm slots. The installed Evocation takes on mechanical form similar to an Alchemical Charm. If it has prerequisite Evocations, she must install them first.

Installing Evocations grants the following benefits:
• The Alchemical can use the installed Evocations without needing to have the artifact or to attune it. A weapon’s Evocations can be used through any weapon, including unarmed attacks and mundane weaponry, while armor Evocations could be used in different armor or while unarmored. The Storyteller may rule out certain Evocations if using them with a given item wouldn’t make sense — some of an artifact bow’s Evocations may not be compatible with a daiklave, for instance.
• If the artifact has an innate power that’s necessary for its Evocations to function, she gains that benefit.
• If she chooses to wield the artifact, its attunement cost is reduced by one mote for each installed Evocation.
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My reading is 'Yep, you can now Collapsing Point of Destruction with any weapon the GM doesn't expressly veto' (So you're likely limited to just ranged weapons).

prisma sun
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Then yeah

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I would actually rule that you can definitely use this with unarmed attacks

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(but you're not immune to it)

tulip folio
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Pictured

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Then again, Collapsing Point of Destruction is also 15m +1 WP. So it's a lot but that's also a Metric Fucktonne of resources. So it's...likely not actually that insane?

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Maybe? I don't know the system well enough to judge.

prisma sun
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one sec

tulip folio
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I also love that since it becomes a physical charm, someone can see you have it by looking at you.

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Someone can go 'This fucker has a black hole in a tube on his back, he's insane!'

prisma sun
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What's the essence pool of an Alch?

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Also actually

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Whats the Anima Banner of an alch??

tulip folio
prisma sun
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So yes this is most of your motes if you want to start with it

tulip folio
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And as for anima effects:

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Orichalcum Caste
Commanding Authority (5m; Supplemental; Instant): The Alchemical adds (higher of Essence or 3) non-Charm dice on a persuade roll that leverages a positive Tie to herself or a community she serves. Once per day, she can retry a failed persuade roll without resetting it.

Forged in Righteousness (Permanent): When the Alchemical gains Willpower from upholding a Major or Defining Principle, she may exchange it for (Intimacy + 5) motes. A sorcerer may gain sorcerous motes instead. This also raises her anima to bonfire.

Radiant Glory Nimbus (5m or 0m; Reflexive; Until next turn): Crackling with electric Essence, the Alchemical adds (higher of Essence or 3) to the raw damage and withering attacks and doubles up to (Essence) 10s on a decisive damage roll. This is free at bonfire.
# 
Moonsilver Caste
Cognitive Overdrive (5m; Reflexive; Until next turn); Supplemental; Instant): The Alchemical can defend against attacks whose successes equal her Defense, and adds (Essence) non-Charm dice on Join Battle rolls and movement actions. She also gains this bonus on any roll involving reaction time or quick reflexes. This is free at bonfire.

Mercurial Facade (Permanent): While her anima is dim, the Alchemical inflicts a −2 penalty on rolls opposing her Guile, Stealth, or disguise.

Quicksilver Cunning (5m; Supplemental; Instant): The Alchemical adds (higher of Essence or 3) nonCharm dice on roll to instill a Principle of belief in a lie. Once per day, she can retry a failed instill roll without resetting it.
# 
Jade Caste
Clay Becomes Stone (5m or 0m; Reflexive; Until next turn): The Alchemical adds (Stamina/2, rounded up) to her soak and gains Hardness (Stamina). Both calculations include bonus dots from Transpuissant Stamina Upgrade (p. XX). She also adds (higher of Essence or 3) non-Charm dice on Stamina rolls to resist environmental hazards. This is free at bonfire.

Hand of Friendship (5m; Supplemental; Instant): The Alchemical adds (higher of Essence or 3) nonCharm dice on a roll to instill positive Ties toward her or weaken negative ones. Once per day, she can retry a failed instill roll without resetting it.

Unbreakable Loyalty (Permanent): The Alchemical gains +2 non-Charm Resolve against influence that would cause her to intentionally harm someone she has a positive Tie toward. This increases to +3 for Major and Defining Ties.
prisma sun
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Oh I mean more like what does it look like

tulip folio
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...oh, whoops.

prisma sun
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Nah that's my bad

tulip folio
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Iconic Anima Effects vary by-caste, so just a moment.

prisma sun
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I just have no mental image of how the cyborgs go super saying

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Sayain

tulip folio
# 
Iconic Anima Effects:

Ori: An enormous spinning gear, crackling with lightning; a blast furnace lit with golden flame; blueprints and schematics for impossible machinery that gradually take on form; cathedrals of stained-glass machinery.

Moonsilver: Raining droplets of sizzling mercury; a whirlwind of razor-edged blades, polished to a mirror sheen; an ever-changing assembly of protean machinery; an intricate latticework of silver wires stalked by machine sentinels.

Jade: An abstract mesh of interlocking gears and churning machinery; an industrial crucible pouring out molten steel; a deafening assembly of steam-driven hammers; a blossoming tree of metal and polymer with an angular, geometric design.

Starmetal: A web-like tracery of prismatic light; a cascade of shimmering glyphs streaming downward; a clockwork orrery of the cosmos; a strobing varicolored light that trails afterimages after the Alchemical.

Soulsteel: A whirring dynamo that crackles with black and pale green lightning; an eerie procession of damned souls; coiling chains of barbed metal that twist and writhe like serpents; a larger-than-life silhouette of the Champion, cast by glaring white light.

Adamant: An endlessly unfolding fractal pattern; dozens of prismatic wings that seem to grow from the Alchemical; a swirling cloud of sparking diamond dust; a surge of kaleidoscopic light refracted through the Champion’s body.
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I refer you in particular to this one from Starmetal: a cascade of shimmering glyphs streaming downward

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"Hello Mr Anderson..."

prisma sun
tulip folio
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But yeah, anima effects for Alchs are not really subtle (Though they also lack an Immaculate Order trying to kick their teeth in so staying hidden is often less of a worry).

prisma sun
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Are you running the Locust Crusade?

tulip folio
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One of their social charms get Even Less Subtle.

# 
Luminous Tactical Overlay Beacons
Towering floodlights mounted on the Alchemical’s shoulders project her anima banner into tactical readouts, providing real-time combat guidance and coordination to her forces.
tulip folio
# prisma sun Are you running the Locust Crusade?

Nah, the game is basicly 'You're Alchs for a very small nation that's outside of the 8 main nations. You are also their First Alchs, as they've been saving for well over a generation to get enough magical materials for you guys. This means you have a lot of sway but also that there isn't really older alchs who can bail you out if something goes wrong'.

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The alchs are a combination of 'newly made' and 'trouble foisted off to another nation' between them.

prisma sun
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Gotcha gotcha

tulip folio
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The only exalts we're likely to encounter as Other Alchs, Exigents and Dragonblooded.

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And not many of the last category as there isn't really super known bloodlines in Autobot City (But they're not impossible to pop up)

tulip folio
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I spent too long at work today pondering Fay.

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And how if exalted ever had a 3e book for them like 2e, how they'd be interesting without being the 'fascinating to read but utter ratshit mechanically' of 2e.

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With 3e Infernals getting a revision to be more just Green Solars from what we've heard, it would be interesting to see Fay steal some of their own mechanical juice.

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The Fay Excellency isn't tied to 'Abilities' or 'Attributes', it's tied to themes.

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If your Archetype is 'The Knight', you can spend excellency on 'Shit the knight should be good at', with it laying out a few sentences for various archetypes like it did for the Yozi themes.

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The Knight is Protective and Loyal, solving things with Endurance and Honour. They deal Straightforwardly and Fairly, handing out Justice in an Even-handed way. The knight's strength to Fulfil Oaths comes from Faith and Iron Will.
tulip folio
# 
Fey Noble Excellency
Fey Nobles can add dice to an (Attribute + Ability) roll for one mote per die using a Role's Excellency. She may also use Excellencies to raise her static values — Evasion, Parry, Resolve, and Guile — paying two motes per +1 bonus. 

Normally, Fey Nobles can’t add more than (Attribute) dice to a roll or raise a static value by more than (Attribute/2, rounded down). Automatic successes count as two dice toward this limit. However, a Fey Noble can increase her dice cap with stunts, adding the rating of an Intimacy to the dice limit (+2 for a Trivial Intimacy, +3 for a Major Intimacy or +4 for a Defining Intimacy) as long as the stunt is described in a way that fits the Intimacy. For example, the Perfect Knight with Dexterity 5 standing in defence of her Sworn Lady may invoke her Defining Intimacy of 'My Lady's Blade' to increase her limit for the Excellency to 9 (5 Dexterity + 4 for a Defining Intimacy)

Fey Nobles may instead buy Automatic Successes for 1 mote per success. Automatic Successes can only be bought this way against Trivial Characters and Battlegroups with a Might lower than the Fey Noble's Essence.```
#

Weaker than the Lunar 'Stat + Stat' but capable of pushing Bad Dice Pools up remarkably well if it Really Matters To Your Themes.

#

(I should stop overthinking splats I doubt they'll ever actually make)

prisma sun
#

You know I still really wanna run a Realm Divide game

upper stratus
#

now 2e abyssals...

tulip folio
upper stratus
#

oh i see

coral wraith
#

you're green now. that's my attack

tulip folio
#

To be fair, that was like half the Malfeas charms 😛

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Just, you know, the green was due to horrible rotting angry sun radiation

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If I was designing Raksha I'd also give them Inverted Avoidance Kata in the charms.

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Where rather than going 'I'm not here', you can just Decide You're Part Of A Scene being described.

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'So we'll cut to the prison cell your friend is in'
'And me!'
'And...wait, what?'

#

Likely with a 'Sorta Scrying But Sorta Not' prereq that has the GM describe what's going on in another place between scenes (With scaling cost/difficulty for how out of the way or unrelated to the current situation it is). Exalts can't see it but the Raksha just peers down from the fourth wall listening to the story.

upper stratus
#

sid's Expected Pain about to acitvate and give them 4th wall awareness when they're being spied on

tulip folio
#

Raksha Peering Over The Top Of The Page
Sid: "THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?"

upper stratus
#

gods you are incredibly enemy of fate. die

bleak hazel
#

Avoidance Kata!
Raksha turns comic page to next scene
Avoidance Kata Again!
this goes on for a while, everyone else is incredibly confused

tulip folio
# 
Best Enemy Dance
Cost: 3m per dot, 1wp; Mins: Appearance 5, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: Stackable, Mortal
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisites: Look, I'm not doing a Full Charmset Right Now.
Everyone's got a role to play and you can't have a reflection without a mirror.

The Raksha weaves gossamer, turning pumpkins into carriages and farmboys into great heroes.The Raksha grants a character a number dots of Abilities and Attributes, paying three motes per dot. She can’t raise a character’s Ability or Attribute ratings above her own and she can only grant a number of dots equal to 1 + the rating of an Intimacy the target has that is either about the Raksha or was created by the Raksha this scene. These Intimacies need not be positive, as a sharp-toothed rival sharpens one's blade just as easily as one buoyed upon the song of a charming bard.

Granted Ability and Attributes dots work the same way as usual and don’t count as dice from Charms, although they can’t be used to meet Charms’ Ability minimums. Her target loses them if she ends this Charm, as the Gossamer-Weaved talent melts away.

The Raksha may use this Charm on multiple characters, paying the commitment cost separately for each.

Mortal: By the Raksha spending an additional willpower, a mortal affected by this Charm may by granted one of the dots permanently, even after the motes are uncommitted. A given mortal cannot gain more than one dot permanently per story.

With an Essence 3 repurchase, the Raksha can also grant the target any number of mundane items equal to the dots granted that have a resources cost no more the Raksha's essence. Weather led by chance to a much needed sword or wearing a gown spun from spidersilk, these items fade away much like the dots when this charm is ended.

Silly Pondering About Raksha Training Charm.

upper stratus
#

what's mortal tag

#

ohw ai tim stupy

tulip folio
#

Literally just 'This has additional effects on mortals'

upper stratus
#

if the dot is granted permanently do the motes become uncommited

tulip folio
#

Yeah, the intent was such. Hence making it kinda Slow to boost a given mortal up/expensive in WP to boost multiple mortals

#

But it lets them Leave A Gift

upper stratus
#

just nap on it just take some naps just nap on your wp it's fine

tulip folio
#

Mortal was a tag that floated in my head as a bit of a callback to how in 2e raksha charms basicly all failed against exalts.

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But that is also Not Fun

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So I sorta inverted it into 'most of them have an Extra Effect on mortals'

upper stratus
tulip folio
#

Like my pondering for another Raksha Charm was:

Hey Look, It's My Onslaught Negator!

Standard Onslaught Negator Stuff Here

Mortal: HEY, HAVE YOU HEARD THE GOOD WORD OF PERFECT DEFENCES?
#

So you get an old 2e-style perfect defence but it only works on mortals.

upper stratus
#

2e raksha really only could manage an invasion after 90% of the population turned into coughing baby

tulip folio
#

Which is funny when shit like Balor existed in fluff. The Exalt Evaporating, Death Gaze Fomorian who needed the Realm Defence Grid to halt.

upper stratus
#

i woulda handled it

tulip folio
#

Balor's Terrible Gaze would also make for a very fun E5 charm. Just a 'Hey, fuck everyone in this general area' AOE attack.

upper stratus
#

'im a bit of a balor myself'

tulip folio
#

'I'm not balor but I play one on TV'

#

But yeah, I really wanted 'Raksha Training' to work on people trying to stab you and people you like. As it felt very Raksha to go 'You're really not a notable enough character to make this part of the story interesting...lets fix that'

#

||Also it just fully lets you Cinderella Fairy Godmother someone.||

#

But I should stop this before I'm forced to become a System Expert so I can do up a full charmset.

upper stratus
#

me when i think about trying my own hand at solar rework (very bad no good)

tulip folio
#

I like Raksha, they're the sort of silly I really like and I really enjoyed one I played in 2e.

#

And a lot of my ideas are coming from how they're not going to be re-using the bits of Infernals I liked, so why shouldn't I make use of them...

upper stratus
#

i'll stick to making evocations

bleak hazel
#

I have a "Solar Rework" that is really just "look, use Golden Calibration and these six charm nerfs"

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but I do not want to test if it's good or not and would rather stick to my comfy deeb/sid/lunar games

#

now with alchs

#

also wait, Alchemicals have one more caste attribute than Lunars do, right?

tulip folio
#

I really liked how the Infernal excellency wasn't about stats or skills, it was about thematics. So my brain basicly went 'okay, what if I divided the raksha charmset into Roles and you get the excellency when Acting Within That Role.

The tricky thing there is 'I think I'd like to divide it up more than the Infernals having like 5-6 Yozi' but also 'One wants to keep it a functional charmset'. XD

bleak hazel
#

they get three caste one favoured

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

no, I mean in terms of caste/favoured charms

tulip folio
#

Oh wait, cast attribute

#

Whoops

#

They get 'the 3 from their caste, +1 of their choice'

bleak hazel
#

OK, Lunars get two caste, two your choice

#

the reason I ask is that Sidereals have this

#

this means that if you're using this as a way to commit five motes and get a permanent 3-4 mote discount on a whole bunch of rolls, which you should because it's really good, the meta option is to copy an Alchemical Exalt

tulip folio
#

Yeah. The various Alch Castes are all 'One Physical, One Mental, One Social'

#

So if you copy any of them with dexterity you're good

bleak hazel
#

Moonsilver is probably best for fightan, because that's Dex + Wits for Join Battle + attacks/parry/movement + Resolve

#

this requires a Sidereal to be familiar with Alchemicals, but I think that's probably less unreasonable than almost any other Creation exalt type

#

got the big heavenly libraries

tulip folio
#

Some of them do exist in creation, just very rarely.

#

So as long as you're willing to go looking for a Fallout Protagonist, you could find one

bleak hazel
#

previously I was copying a Full Moon Lunar, but that didn't boost Join Battle (or Appearance, kind of pointless as that is)

tulip folio
#

I do really like how, mostly, the alchemical charms are kinda well spread between attributes.

#

Appearance, Intelligence and Charisma are all War Charm Stats

bleak hazel
#

bonus points for this

#

my new speciality is "when pretending to be another kind of Exalt"

tulip folio
#

'Making bad decisions'

#

snrk

bleak hazel
#

free excellencies as long as I do the robot with supreme flair

upper stratus
#

oh right it stops you from doing it with martial arts but you can just yoink a dexterity attribute instead

bleak hazel
#

(that would be a silly speciality unless I was the Green Lady or something, but "against enemies of fate" is pretty broad)

bleak hazel
#

and that's saying something

#

Sids are already quite mote efficient so if you make their cheap excellency almost free with Artistic Vision + Exalt Ways you have a pretty superb level of baseline capability

#

parry 7 + 2 (WOE) +1 (Stunt) = you need to roll 20+ dice to land a glove on me, on average

#

2 motes to boost up to parry 11, which you probably should do

tulip folio
#

brb, picking the fateweaving spec of 'smugly'

bleak hazel
#

light artifact weapon, by the way

#

anyway, if you want your Infernal-style Vibes Excellencies in 3e, Sids are where it's at

#

they also have another craft charm that boosts them with one particular element, like the old 2e Craft (Fire, Water, etc.) stuff

tulip folio
#

That's cool

#

I've got Sids, 2e Infernals and Alchemicals all floating about my head.

#

(Sids for the charms being mostly Weird Effects over Numbers Stuff, Infernals for the theme-based charm lineup and Alchs for how limitation to charmsets can make the more fun)

bleak hazel
#

the fun part of that combo is that it comes online at Essence 3, where your excellency is +3 dice for 1 mote each + -2 to TN for 1 mote each, so if you're at bonfire you actually waive both of those and get literally free Excellence

#

at E4 and E5 you do actually need to pay for the last couple of dice because your excellency gets better

#

the main downside is that if you're bonfire while disguised as an Alchemical you don't get the Sid Anima benefit of not producing a kilometres-high pillar of glowing silver light

upper stratus
#

setting my artistic vision to "for duty" so i can get my free shit forever

tulip folio
#

...I might be wrong but Supernal really rubs me the wrong way. Like it feels like a boring way to make a splat good at things.

bleak hazel
#

although you don't have a caste mark as a fake Alch, so there is probably a level of "what the fuck is that thing"

upper stratus
tulip folio
upper stratus
#

"i put 12 of my starting charms into my melee supernal" ok get ready to be bored dingus

bleak hazel
#

that is a very Sid way to get owned for your cool mote efficiency combo, admittedly

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

combat supernals are even bored in combat, they pop all their E4 combat charms and the enemy instantly melts, leaving them to go back to sitting on the substitute bench feeling unsatisfied

tulip folio
#

Basicly: You automatically start off with every single charm of your Primary Role...but you still need to meet prereqs to use them.

bleak hazel
#

you don't need Supernal to make an incredibly broken combat solar but it does make it very easy to do by accident if people actually expect to be playing an E1 game rather than an E5 game with smaller mote pools

tulip folio
#

So you've just got 'Hey, I'll eventually unlock this without spending exp as I go along'

#

Rather than 'I have this forever and immediately'

bleak hazel
#

that is cool but I think would require squidging their trees down a bit

#

"you get 1/9 of all charms in existence for free" is a lot when your average E3 exalt has like 25-30 charms

tulip folio
#

Oh 100%

#

The intent was that each role is like...8 charms.

#

They're Mini-Trees

bleak hazel
#

oh yeah that's cool then, "XP discount on Supernal" was one of the ways I'd considered reworking it

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I don't really have a preferred Supernal rework - Essence +1 is neat but small, discounted Excellencies are irrelevant for most non-combat skills, cheaper charms warp the XP economy in a way I'm not sure I like, etc.

#

making it a keyword on lots of charms like Mastery is a billion years of work

tulip folio
#

So if you pick the Fomorian as your Primary you get a Scary Fucker charm and the Raksha equivelent of Solar Sabre at E1. Then you get 2 more at each of E2/E3, then 1 at each of E4/E5.

#

And that is your 'Supernal' equivelent.

#

A Good Number of Linked Themed Charms

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But they're not A Full Charm Tree in size

bleak hazel
#

my only slight bit of feedback there is that Glorious Solar Sabre/Claws of the Silver Moon/Auspicious Instrument for Strife/Material Synthesis Wave Emitter are all E2 charms/submodules with one prereq

#

so the place in the tree that that one takes is very well established

tulip folio
#

That's fair! I forgot since the Alch one is E1. XD

bleak hazel
#

the submodule for the alch one that actually gives you artifact traits is E2

tulip folio
#

Essence Pulse Cannon is E1 and is an artifact from the start but it's Pay Per Attack.

#

But that's fair

bleak hazel
#

Auspicious Instrument for Strife is the same - first purchase at E1 gives you buffed Improvised Weapons, second purchase at E2 gives said weapons Artifact traits

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which I really like

#

death chopsticks

upper stratus
#

killed them with a pencil

bleak hazel
#

they basically come with a decent damage charm attached too, the pencil is in many respects more impressive than a daiklaive

image.png
tulip folio
#

I think the Raksha one would be Manifesting Legends.

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So you don't get the actual version of that artifact

bleak hazel
#

I am not sure what tags you're allowed to say your Improvised Weapon has

tulip folio
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But you grab hold of it's story and pull it out

upper stratus
#

piercing tag on the pencil

bleak hazel
#

you can have an Improvised Club, so maybe it's just "stunt as any existing weapon type but you attach the improv tag to it?"

#

that would make sense

#

alternatively they're just all clubs or maces, which makes sense but is boring

#

Smashing tag pretty good though

upper stratus
#

smashing tag crazy good

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forcing someone to spend a turn on getting up

bleak hazel
#

or at least flurry getting up, yeah

upper stratus
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yea like. the difficulty 2 isn't gonna be a big deal for any combat character even with lfurry penalty but the penalty on whatever else you do stings

bleak hazel
#

bonus points if you put him on the ground with this

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a style I never really have much interest in but does allow you to really annoy people

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useless against Solaroids because they're damn near impossible to decisive without winning the fight first and don't care about Onslaught, great against big stompy monsters

tulip folio
# 
Your ensouled story may be an existing artifact weapon, even ones which have not been lost to time. Nothing stops you bringing the story of the Roseblack's Thorn against her, save perhaps good taste.
upper stratus
#

raksha watches a sidereal use auspicious implement of strife once and decides chopsticks are legendary weapons

tulip folio
#

...actually...that would be fun for Raksha Crafting. Raksha Crafting has 2 variants:

  1. Making Temporary Things From Gossamer. They don't last but you spin them up in moments.
  2. Awakening the stories of existing objects. You get a bonus based on how famous the object is, even if it's not actually made of magical materials.
#

'This is the sword of the long-lost heir, it's mundane steel but it's got a story that outshines some objects of jade'

upper stratus
#

[nearby deeb decked out in jade artifacts] oh come on man

tulip folio
#

"Oh shut up, you're part of a Might +3 Battlegroup, you're barely a person."

upper stratus
#

oh iki i didn't know you wrote for 2e

tulip folio
#

Hahahah

#

perfect dodges the accusation

bleak hazel
#

let me get my new 2.9999e charm, Double Zeal

upper stratus
#

im tempted to wiggle my sid around for the craft dots to grab artistic vision but it really doesn't suit it and i don't have anything i wanna give up

bleak hazel
#

my current Sid is in a similar position because we already have craft on the other Sid in the game

upper stratus
#

i also just don't want to engage with craft

#

i don't wanna look at that

bleak hazel
#

but if I was to make him again as a standalone character he would have a lot more Int stuff and move Presence to Craft favoured

#

I actually like the crafting so I will suck it up

#

solo Vigil has less combat stuff and more "every skill tree that hangs off Int"

upper stratus
#

the game already suckered me into presence dots for heroic essence replenishment

bleak hazel
#

Craft 5, Occult 5, maybe some Lore

#

definitely Investigate

#

Lore tree doesn't really grab me for the actual charms but maybe I should put dots in it for big fact introducing even if I don't favour it

#

ooh

#

I am pretty sure that that doesn't stack with Soulfire Form or I'd keep on with it

#

then again, maybe it does, since this is a decidedly different way to gain motes

upper stratus
#

pretty sure it stacks

bleak hazel
#

OK, Sid Efficiency Build has an extra component

#

just keep throwing full excellencies at everything and hang on in there

#

downside is that you don't really persuade or threaten

velvet raft
#

You know what charm I really want to like but can't? The one Solar occult charm that lets you get a spirit familiar who increases in power as you do

#

Because the charm is essentially impossible to use without homebrewing said spirit

bleak hazel
#

I would really like Solar Survival if the default effect wasn't to produce a tyrant lizard capable of solo killing 90% of things

#

(or an emu, or anything really, it's just most obvious with big beefy boys)

#

Sids let you promote a familiar to minor godhood and then promote it again to the Celestial Bureaucracy, which feels mean

#

"hey, I got you a boring office job"

"boss, I was a normal cat six months ago and that was way less stressful, change me back"

upper stratus
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'no'

next delta
bleak hazel
next delta
#

Sounds pretty close. Though that "occasional" is pretty load bearing on that front lol

lunar magnet
tulip folio
# bleak hazel let me get my new 2.9999e charm, Double Zeal

...okay so I hate Zeal but it would be a pretty damn funny Mortal effect for a charm to go 'Hey, so when you and a mortal oppose each other in a roll, pay resources to get Them +1 Successes. Wouldn't work on non-mortals though'.

(Lets not talk about the 'Hey, so this beats perfect defences except for the fact perfect defences always win so this charm is stupid and should die')

#

Just a 'Anything you can do, I can do better' assholery vs a mortal

bleak hazel
#

this is why mine is Double Zeal, it's Zeal but it actually works this time

#

and as such does literally nothing because there are no Virtues to channel any longer

bleak hazel
dense verge
#

throwing dart

next delta
#

Possibly a homing one

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

turning into tyrant lizards is admittedly classic Lunar behaviour but setting the solar's pet Rexy on things with fifty active buffs is kind of hell to resolve in combat in comparison to the Lunar, who can usually look after their own character sheet

#

I wonder how juiced you can make a pattern spider

#

they're not animals, so a lot of the normal stuff doesn't quite work

tulip folio
#

The Alch ones are pretty lean but the baseline animals they get are a bit beter.

#

As they don't get animals.

#

They get constructs

#

Well, you can get a Rat or Cockroach if you want.

#

Here's an odd one: Are there any charms that specifically affect characters trying to beat each other in a non-combat sorta way?

I'm thinking like 'If people are competing but in a non-combat sorta way'. Trying to race towards something or Contests etc.

Or is that too specific/mostly just the realm of 'this boosts this specific skill, so you'll win with it more'. Pondering if there's any more weird/esoteric charms for that sorta thing.

bleak hazel
#

Solar athletics has a bunch of "test of speed/test of strength" stuff based around races and similar, but most of the newer charmsets don't bother much

velvet raft
bleak hazel
#

not many people got use out of Solar Footracing

#

and then obviously there are many trees everywhere for social influence

#

fairly easy to conjure an opposed crafting contest by just going "we do artifact crafting but oppose the successes on the two extended rolls, go"

dense verge
#

ive given my horse a senate job and now he has taken up the drink trying to understand yu shan politics

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

combat is just the thing the system has by far the most interest in so there are one billion charms for that

bleak hazel
#

the issue with Solar Athletics was that the rush charms also had a huge amount of text talking about "tests of speed", which was completely undefined so everyone just kind of assumed it meant "extended rolls to race someone"

#

which is probably the majority of contested running content

#

all those charms also had stuff that buffs rushes, but it does mean that half of the subtree is just pointless text

#

this one is kind of cute, though

tulip folio
# 
Better Than You Meditation
Cost: 3 Motes
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Mortal
Duration: Instant
When the Raksha make an Opposed Action (Pg 189, Core Rulebook), she can reroll (Essence) failed dice. This cannot be used in combat (Though it could be used in a sparring match that wouldn't go to true combat), to cause harm to a being (Except through hurt pride) or to Influence characters.

Mortal: If all characters being opposed are Mortals, the Raksha instead replaces their roll with a number of successes equal to the highest successes achieved by any opposed mortal +1.
bleak hazel
#

you can just write "(Essence) failed dice", it helps considerably when reading longer charmsets

tulip folio
#

Fair!

#

The intent is it's 'I am really good at Competing With People' without making them a Combat Monster or something.

#

It's also intended to be a lot less 'super situational' than the Solar Race Good charms. XD

#

Like it's still situational

upper stratus
bleak hazel
#

the Siddy "screw you, God-King's Shrike" button also allows you to destroy their attempt at matching you in Prophecy by defeating them in the marketplace of ideas

tulip folio
#

'I perform a hostile takeover (Financial) of the wizards tower'

bleak hazel
#

convenient clause there allowing you to chop the thinky and outthink the choppy

tulip folio
#

I will admit, Dice Fuckery Charms kinda make my eyes glaze even if I know some of them are Really Good. XD

bleak hazel
#

this is why I always struggle reading the Lunar charmset

#

the Solar one is just incoherent, but the Lunar one has a lot of "gain +X non-charm dice to blah de blah" arranged in subtrees that mean that six or so abilities in a row will be variations on a theme

#

then occasionally there's a real banger

tulip folio
#

I think if I plan to tinker with this hypothetical raksha thing I need to sit down and internalize them more though.

#

As right now I don't have a good personal valuation of various sorts of dice fuckery. XD

upper stratus
tulip folio
#

...actually, lets play into the mechanical area I wanted to mess about with for Raksha more.

upper stratus
#

raksha version of this where you have to set the terms of a game in advance but you're allowed to be tricksy about the wording sounds funny

bleak hazel
#

whenever someone tries to do a Weird Charmset I do end up thinking "this is Sidereal territory" more than I probably should

dense verge
bleak hazel
#

the Sid role in the celestial trifecta of "less raw power, more Weird Stuff" does mean it steps on their deal a bit if other people also start doing that

upper stratus
#

maybe raksha should be a on terrestrial level Clueless

bleak hazel
#

it would be nice to have Weird Terrestrials

light olive
tulip folio
# 
Better Than You Meditation
Cost: 3 Motes
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Mortal
Duration: Instant
When the Raksha make an Opposed Action (Pg 189, Core Rulebook), she gains a number of Non-Charm dice equal to the value of the highest intimacy a character being has that connects to this Opposed Action (For example, if a competitor has a Defining Principle related to this area, or is taking part in order to aid a person they have a Major Tie to). This cannot be used in combat (Though it could be used in a sparring match that wouldn't go to true combat), to cause harm to a being (Except through hurt pride) or to Influence characters.

Mortal: If all characters being opposed are Mortals, the Raksha instead replaces their roll with a number of successes equal to the highest successes achieved by any opposed mortal +1.

Changed it from being about your essence to 'how much someone cares'. You get no bonus if Nobody Gives A Shit but a big bonus if someone's got something Defining on the line.

next delta
#

Huh, most of the exalted splats are Celestial aren't they?

bleak hazel
#

only deebs, liminals and some exigents are terrestrial, yeah

#

and liminals aren't properly out for 3e

tulip folio
#

And even then...'eh, kinda, ish' with exigents as they're Barely A Splat. XD

#

They're a couple of hundred pages of 'What if you made homebrew'

next delta
#

If Dream Souled ever get a 3E write up, they might be pretty weird terrestrials

#

Or did Exigents cover them?

upper stratus
#

yea they're in exigents

next delta
#

I guess Deebs outnumber all the other exalted combined. Pretty funny that terrestrial tier was originally "sucks to suck dragonborn" lol

dense verge
#

power gap is more workable in 3e

upper stratus
#

none of the 3 exigents book 'lil extra exalt guys' inspired anything in me tbh

tulip folio
#

I'll admit, working out where to put Raksha is weird as they fluffwise vary so widely from 'Mook for starting DBs' (2e mechanics) to 'This guy is a threat to all of creation and can wipe out entire swaths of exalts at once' (Balor in fluff).

bleak hazel
#

I would like to see Terrestrial-Grade Raksha proper

dense verge
#

its understandable why they dropped the back of exigents extra splats from plans

bleak hazel
tulip folio
#

I'd likely need to make their excellency a fair bit worse to be terrestial-grade. XD

bleak hazel
#

around 400 lunars, 150 solars, 100 abyssals, 50 infernals, 100 sids and then a few hundred assorted exigents

#

so ~20k Dragonbloods and then about a thousand of everyone else combined

#

I still think there should be twice as many Sids

next delta
#

Not that it is terribly relevant to creation. Do we have rough numbers for how many Alchemicals there are?

bleak hazel
#

they would still be Very Understaffed but it would make more sense that they deploy parties of young sids when that's 5% of all Sidereals in existence

tulip folio
#

Right now it's worse than lunars but better than DBs.

Raksha Excellency
Raksha can add dice to an (Attribute + Ability) roll for one mote per die using a Role's Excellency. She may also use Excellencies to raise her static values — Evasion, Parry, Resolve, and Guile — paying two motes per +1 bonus. 

Normally, Raksha can’t add more than (Attribute) dice to a roll or raise a static value by more than (Attribute/2, rounded down). Automatic successes count as two dice toward this limit. However, a Raksha can increase her dice cap with stunts, adding the rating of an Intimacy to the dice limit (+2 for a Trivial Intimacy, +3 for a Major Intimacy or +4 for a Defining Intimacy) as long as the stunt is described in a way that fits the Intimacy. For example, the Perfect Knight with Dexterity 5 standing in defence of her Sworn Lady may invoke her Defining Intimacy of 'My Lady's Blade' to increase her limit for the Excellency to 9 (5 Dexterity + 4 for a Defining Intimacy)

Raksha may instead buy Automatic Successes for 1 mote per success. Automatic Successes can only be bought this way against Trivial Characters and Battlegroups with a Might lower than the Raksha's Essence.
upper stratus
next delta
#

It's only 20 circles

dense verge
#

the sid number is too low imo as, more sids means more office politics. at current its like, decently sized marching band. got to have that sweet spot where everyone knows everyone but not really

upper stratus
#

i think office politics still works cause it's not just sids in the bureau

tulip folio
#

There's a lot of Pissy Gods

bleak hazel
#

they are also said to be doing a lot of stuff just kind of on the side, and when you add up all the guys supposedly teaching at the realm academies, hanging out in the imperial palace and infilitrating various places you start running out of sids

next delta
#

Clearly none of them are actually doing their office job

bleak hazel
#

need slightly more starpower

#

(ha ha)

next delta
#

Also, creation is huge so all these numbers are very tiny

upper stratus
#

i think that's by design. like normally destiny threatening that requires sid interference barely happens but the age of tumult is seeing a sharp uptick and they actually can't handle it

tulip folio
#

(I should also ponder if my thoughts on making them All About Intimacies is a good thing for Rakshas. It felt very 'Playing into the story', as it's more about Themes than Personal Capabilities)

upper stratus
#

it also helps that they have access to heaven shortcut discount fast travel

bleak hazel
#

normally they have an absurdly massive workload, now it's just genuinely absurd

#

I think this dynamic would be preserved were there twice as many

next delta
upper stratus
#

(that's why they shouldn't have added getimians)

bleak hazel
#

does mean you'd need to stop using Fivefold Fellowship and Fivescore Fellowship interchangeably and settle on the former, but that's fine

next delta
#

You could have a special category of intimacies for just story related ones if this is for PCs maybe?

bleak hazel
#

normally I just go "right, fighting, this is a big roll, I put [my normal number of dice] motes into it"

#

whereas here you have power that is basically capped by the amount you are willing to continuously update your character sheet to keep all your intimacies strong and relevant

#

there's no rules for how often you can do that for obvious reasons, so this is just asking for a two mile long intimacy sheet

tulip folio
# next delta You could have a special category of intimacies for just story related ones if t...

Maybe! The special category they have was going to be Roles, for their excellencies. So rather than having an excellency for an Attribute or Ability, they have it for a Role and can boost roles that are Related To That Role.

The Knight is Protective and Loyal, solving things with Endurance and Honour. They deal Straightforwardly and Fairly, handing out Justice in an Even-handed way. The knight's strength to Fulfil Oaths comes from Faith and Iron Will.

Aka: I'm reviving 2e Infernal Excellencies but with a bit of my own spin on it. XD

dense verge
#

yeah my other concern is accidentally running out of sids to introduce

bleak hazel
#

that's also true, yeah

dense verge
#

since theres also a small number of non-bureau sids at any one time

#

we know the bureau has at most 19 endings sids because rakan is out and about

upper stratus
#

not for long if i got something to say about it

next delta
#

I think intimacies are extremely workable for NPCs because you avoid all the problems Misc mentioned and it's close enough and basically hits all the mechanical properties you want to hit

tulip folio
#

People make a group of 5 sids and each take a Sid ally. By accident they have all picked the same type for themselves and their ally. 50% of sids of that sort are now defined 😛

bleak hazel
#

there are so few sids that it starts getting difficult to justify doing classic Sid stuff, like "teaching at the magic academy for years to get myself a giant network of deebs who like me and send them on interesting field trips"

#

these guys should be bouncing from trouble spot to trouble spot to crisis every week because there are like twenty Social Sids and they have shit to do

next delta
#

Also some of them will be dead at any given time

bleak hazel
#

or in training, yeah

#

it just starts getting a little untenable

tulip folio
#

'Hey, I know you've used Mighty Thews to swing a sword 5 times already but justify if again'

bleak hazel
#

attributes are a lot more generic than intimacies

next delta
#

I think intimacy based stuff in general is cool though!

bleak hazel
#

I would recommend doing Role Stuff and calculating the dice cap in a different way

#

putting intimacy stuff in individual charms is just a lot less finnicky

tulip folio
#

...I could set roles up as a type of Raksha only intimacy. So your Defining Role can add up to 4 extra dice, a Major Role can add up to +3 and a Minor Role can add up to +2 more.

bleak hazel
#

that works rather better, I think

next delta
#

I think that would make sense

bleak hazel
#

going through the other exalt types, none of them quite have the same problems Sids do with manpower

tulip folio
#

Also makes raksha very vulnerable to people going 'Hey, why don't you Act In Character?'

#

And then going '...fuck, it's What My Character Would Do...'

next delta
#

Sids are also the only ones who have a hard number right?

bleak hazel
#

there are a bazillion deebs, the Lunars are quite numerous enough to do their "sitting on our arses making beast kingdoms" stuff and adventuring, Solaroids tend to be isolated monads anyway

dense verge
#

the other exalt types i dont need to worry about running out of characters to establish

bleak hazel
#

and solar derivatives

next delta
#

Oh, fair

bleak hazel
#

the bit that tends to get blurry for those is "how many weren't stuck in the Jade Prison"

next delta
#

Yeah

bleak hazel
#

to be fair, "get the maidens to create a hundred more sids" sounds like the climax of a suitably awesome heavenly politics sid campaign

#

since that's a fairly notable sacrifice even for the Incarna

#

starting a new faction just for that

next delta
#

What metal name will you give it

bleak hazel
#

Silver was the name for the tiny rump faction that focused on the Lunars

#

Brass isn't very catchy

tulip folio
# 
Raksha have unique intimacies called Roles. These roles form the substance the person the Raksha is pretending to be, shaping both body and mind.

Roles cannot be affected by any effect that does not expressly mention roles and non-Raksha cannot have a role unless forced into one by the Gossamer Actor Entangling charm.

At character creation, each Raksha must have one role of each level (Defining, Major, Minor).

How about this?

bleak hazel
#

I assume I can't just take every single one at Defining by writing them down like normal intimacies

#

and you stick to your three

tulip folio
next delta
#

I would add a bit about how some types of magic outside of that can affect them. But that's very nitpicky

tulip folio
#

They're basically your Favored Stats.

next delta
#

(for backwards compatibility reasons)

tulip folio
#

But being intimacies you can leverage them (Or have them leveraged).

next delta
#

Yeah, I like that tech. It makes a lot of sense for them

tulip folio
next delta
#

Haha

#

Yeah, I think it'd have to be very special magic and not just normal social stuff

bleak hazel
#

hmm

#

to create more Sids, get every existing Sid to agree to petition the maidens

#

that means (probably) killing Rakan, bringing the other rogues on board, aligning CK before he dies of old age, etc.

#

sounds like a fun campaign

tulip folio
#

Better option than petition. All go on strike.

#

Collective Action

bleak hazel
#

going into the underworld to find the Green Lady and figure out what memories she has today so you can get her on side too

next delta
#

You can add fun stuff like you can't use decision points against role intimacies (unless it is a stronger one). And using them for the decision point waves the WP cost

tulip folio
#

I might make super locking in an optional charm

#

Still want to be fun to play

bleak hazel
#

alternate alternate possibility: you do it far more slowly by finding Getimians, convincing them to work for the Bureau and writing them into fate with a special Maidenly writ that organises them into this plane of existence as a Sidereal

#

but maybe that's too much fucking with exaltations

#

which is classically not allowed

next delta
#

Getting 100 people to all agree on something does sound like a mythic feat 😛

next delta
#

So ideally whenever you are persuaded to do a thing you are like "yeah, duh, you didn't have to ask"

bleak hazel
#

there being only about a dozen getimians at any one time because some of them are killed and an unknown number have been recruited to actually be Sidereals would be a fun way to make the number of existing sids "100 + Unknown", now I think about it

next delta
#

(giving bennies out also helps make this fun)

bleak hazel
#

we have killed Rakan and then brought his stock of suitcase nukes on board

#

pretty sure their exaltation is actually meant to be a secret second thing that is not actually related to Sidereal exaltations in that way, but whatever, I'm just musing

next delta
#

Geitimians seem relatively easy to turn, or at least "defuse", once they have accepted their reality never existed?

#

What is Rakan's goal anyways?

tulip folio
#

...what is the number of charms per splat? Solars look to have Too Many and Alchs Not A Tonne (But have submodules)

upper stratus
#

gets were made by two primordials teaming up yea. no maiden involvement

next delta
#

Going by advanced character creation for Alchemicals, they spend about half their xp on charms. Other splats probably would spend more, so you'd want enough so that you have enough that characters would want to buy a bit more than 45 charms by essence 5 plus some essence 5 capstone charms?

prisma sun
tulip folio
# 
Plot-Body Technique
You're got too much story to die.
next delta
#

That seems really bad. I feel like you could convince a geitimian that is a real bad idea lol

dense verge
#

Rakan is a radical free will proponent in my mind

next delta
dense verge
#

man is shooting slightly under jagganoth in goals but has the demeanor of a older, kind, if somewhat bumbling, college english professor. he also parried saturn.

next delta
#

(they are of course either a fae or somehow wyld touched)

tulip folio
#

That's fun

bleak hazel
#

unfortunately like a lot of the core book bad guys he has stats so low that you can kick his ass with a mild application of excellencies and not a lot else going on

#

they were really calibrating for "yeah, most characters are going to have like 3 dex 3 melee" despite giving tons of bonus points out and locking most of every tree behind Ability 5

tulip folio
#

notes down a wound penalty reducer that can turn off incapacitated or dead for one round to get in some dying words

bleak hazel
#

you could maybe steal a fun homebrew Sid charm I saw once

next delta
#

The Ability 5 requirements is in particular a Solar charmset tic right?

bleak hazel
#

the attribute charmsets are quite generous, the Sid and Deeb ones are less so

#

you still need Ability 5 for most E2+ charms in a thing when you're a Siddy

bleak hazel
#

for Raksha this would presumably be themed as more "assassins creed target kill conversation"

#

the big stage spotlight goes on the two of you and you get to have a Last Talk

tulip folio
#

100%

bleak escarp
#

They were wildly overpowered, in large part because they got the kind of mechanical depth usually given to PC's when they just bluntly aren't - and I say that as someone who loves fairy mythology and got into Exalted via Raksha.

#

A raksha PC could hang with and challenge Solars. Generally not win, unless the Solar had fucked up their build some, but force them to expend meaningful effort.

wise ocean
next delta
#

Electrum sounds like the Gold/Silver Alliance name

#

iridium because it comes from space

bleak hazel
#

Copper Spiders is sadly the designator for Twilight Caste solars or I'd use that

wise ocean
#

modernity for a fraught new era

next delta
#

Zinc has a high coefficient of linear expansion and is a metal that fits the setting probably?

#

Copper, though not nearly as extreme, would have also worked there

spring lynx
next delta
#

Iron is relatively common right? That would work in a nontypical metaphorical sense

spring lynx
#

actually, why does a faction that isn't about who gets to rule creation need a metal name anyway

next delta
#

I mean fair, but something something faux pas something

spring lynx
#

wouldn't it be more of a faux-pas to use a metal name given that connotation? people might get the wrong idea

next delta
#

This is why the sidereal increasing faction never got off the ground. Still arguing about that to this day

spring lynx
#

also iron faction sounds like abyssals to me

#

'cause like, iron circle necromancy and whatnot

next delta
#

Damnit

#

Definitely don't let those guys be in charge of Creation

spring lynx
#

ooh, how about the crucible faction? 'cause you smelt metals in one and everyone knows the sids love manipulating shit

bleak hazel
#

Iron circle is not actually a circle any longer

#

Ivory, Shadow, Void, in order of juice

tulip folio
bleak escarp
#

Raksha should be weaker than that.

#

But their stuff was janky and broken.

#

The errata/rewrite helped some, but also made them more broken in some ways.

#

Primarily it's that that they could pump their dicepools up to 20 before charms and gear with Attribute 7 + 1 (Glorious Hero Form) + Ability 7 + Specialty 3 + 2 (Surpassing Excellence).

#

A Solar's dicepool maxes out at 23 with a full excellency spend.

#

Then the Raksha gets, for the sake of argument, Assumption of Air Shape (Permanent), Sovereign Element Shape and Mercurial Element Shape, and rolls 25 dice + Equipment bonuses for everything they can stunt airbending as helping with.

#

There's various other bonuses you can tack on. Shaping Actions are severely limited against Creationborn, but you can still make one per scene for effectively 1 autosux, Graces make for highly effective, explicitly magical gear that can apply to anything, like a ring of trapped winds that adds an equipment bonus of (Essence) dice to your Dodge pool.

#

It's legal, but broken as all get out. The whole reason Dodge DV is Dexterity + Dodge + Essence because it's not supposed to have equipment bonuses like Parry DV gets, but Fair Folk RAW doesn't care.

bleak hazel
#

I encountered basically zero raksha in my brief 2e career but it sounds like they have the Deathlord Problem

#

raw stat too big

bleak escarp
#

Basically.

bleak hazel
#

I actually really like FAFL's statblock this edition, I want to see what that fight's like

bleak escarp
#

It's an artifact of 1e - in 1e you had to actively roll defenses, and split your dicepool between parrying multiple incoming attacks, so Raksha could throw some high-pool defences but only against so many attacks, or at the cost of not attacking themselves, or they just had 0 defence and died.

#

Whoever ported them kept the high dicepools, but ignored that the system had changed in ways that drastically altered the balance.

#

There's some genuinely fun stuff and gameable stuff they can do when you get past this, like the ease with which they can whip up minions and minibosses - Transient Works of Flesh and Bone means you can spend 5m to instantly throw 75-150 extras at whatever the current problem, and honestly, immediately vomiting a horde of expendable minions at any and all problems is just good clean fun.

bleak hazel
#

oh yeah, 3e necromancy lets you hit the same stuff and I love it

bleak escarp
#

But the sheer size of the passive dicepools a raksha noble can throw around was absurdly broken.

bleak hazel
#

abyssals, whenever slightly threatened:

#

with Shape Sorcery not costing your own motes it doesn't even impede your mote regen any, as long as you've got the willpower

tulip folio
#

Got it, convinced that Raksha should be solar tier in honour of their history (Kidding, Kidding)

tulip folio
# 
Transient Works of Flesh and Bone
Cost: 10m, 1 WP; Mins: Charisma 4, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One scene
The Raksha rolls (Charisma + [Performance, Craft or War]) against difficulty 1. Success conjures a Size 1 battle group of Battle-Ready Troops with Average Drill and Might 0. The Raksha may spend additional successes for the following bonuses:

2 Successes: Increase the Size by 1, to a maximum of (essence) Size
3 Successes: Increase Traits to Elite Troops.
3 Successes: Increase Drill to Elite.
3 Successes: Increase Might by +1, to a maximum of +2

Calling The Dance Of Blades
Mins: Charisma 5, Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None
The Raksha gains a number of non-charm successes on Transient Works of Flesh and Bone equal to 1+ the highest Might among battle groups opposing them in this scene. The cost of increasing Traits, Drill and Might with Transient Works of Flesh and Bone are reduced by 1 Success.
bleak hazel
#

is "minion" an established statblock?

#

and/or will you write it as one

tulip folio
#

I was planning on basicly using a reflavouring of Battle-Ready Troop. So you get Basic Dudes.

#

There, spelled out they're Literally Just Battle-Ready Troops (Though with your own flavour applied to them).

bleak hazel
#

yeah that's the standard

#

compares favourably with Raise the Skeletal Horde

tulip folio
#

Less might but better drill to start.

bleak hazel
#

BRTs are also rather better than zombies

#

the benefit of the zambies here is that they stick around

tulip folio
#

While these are 10 motes every time you want them to Come Out Of The Pokeball

bleak hazel
#

I like that yours don't have Perfect Morale and can't gain it

#

"it would be narratively appropriate for them to run now.... ah fuck where are you going?"

tulip folio
#

I mean, it's not in character for them to just keep marching in 😛

bleak hazel
#

I would slap a willpower cost on yours though

#

the zambie one is functionally 1wp

tulip folio
#

That's fair. Especially since they do have Calling as a pretty decent upgrade.

#

Which was designed to be 'it's a decent upgrade but it really shines when you are facing Other Cool Armies'

#

Not when just fighting peasent militias

bleak hazel
#

I have really been enjoying the non-combat exalted stuff lately

#

War + Necromancy + Craft is a great combo

#

my response to a combat scene can just be "go my scarabs" and throwing a mega-buffed unit of Hungry Ghosts at someone

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

I was invited to a "nation-building" game at E3

#

so Craftgar the abyssal is starting off with the good stuff

#

if I rebuilt the Sid I'm currently playing he'd probably have the E1 variant of that without the War honestly

#

because there are really good necromantic and sorcerous initiations for crafters

#

you can fill your spare minutes whittling yourself Dishonored bone charms to cash in for sorcery later

dense verge
#

ooh nation building

wise ocean
#

flashbacks to the nationstate forum RP era

bleak escarp
#

Those are still a thing.

prisma sun
#

Flashback to Supreme Death Hell

prisma sun
# 

Sif was a staunch loyalist to the Bronze Faction, a dedicated follower of Yu Shan, a martial artist and sorcerer with little peer. He was dedicated, dutiful, and beloved.

So imagine the Beauru's surprise when he died of Old Age, and his Exaltation could not be found. 

It wasn't as if he had been trapped, or waylaid, or ensorceled. The Stars clearly writ that his Exaltation was to be born over a dozen occassions, yet they never seemed to fruit. It was only when Drifts, a nomad upon the Blessed Isle of no name or worth (so he claims), was born, and the Beauru dedicated several agents both Sidreal and mortal to watch his growth to ensure no false alarm. 

After he indeed took his Second Breath, and his colleagues in the Fivescore Fellowship weclomed back their old comrade, they were aghast at the differences. Where Sif was the epitome of a statesman, Drifts in Gossammer was as flighty as a beaurucrat could get. He missed appointments, skipped training, and constantly wandered into Yu Shan to experience the never-ending novelty. Many who came to know him would joke that the errancy in his incarnation was simply Drifts being late to his own Exaltation.

Nevertheless, such a Journey Caste as he finds his use. He possesses a startling humility, and a intuition of the "Flow of the Loom" that has seen him spur Heaven's mandate with superlative ease. 

And though there's no one alive to know, save perhaps for the Traitor of Heaven, *this* was the true Sif. Unburdened of the trauma of the Three Great Catasotrophes, he relishes in the Age of Sorrows, seeing the manifold turning points of history as another long play, to which he is honored to play his part.```
dense verge
#

I love him

bleak hazel
#

excellent Siddy

#

I always like seeing Journeys show up, they don't get too much screen time

spring lynx
#

comes with the territory of being the Miscellaneous Caste

bleak hazel
#

nah, all two of my Sidereals are Endings so far

#

with one Battles and one Secrets in the draft pile

#

(but I should make a Journeys guy)

tulip folio
#

I've only played a Sid once and they were Endings. I should try sids again some time, in 2e they were really tricky to build and I kept running into 'I have no clue which charmset I need for the capabilities I want'. XD

#

But it seems like 3e helped there a lot

bleak hazel
#

they still bounce around a bit, but there's a sidebar telling you what trees do what at the start of character creation

spring lynx
#

i've played exactly one game of exalted and it wasn't as a sid, but i've been floating a serenity around for ages

tulip folio
#

I'd find it hard to resist, if I played a serenity, going basicly 'My character spends time making her headcanon relationships correct' 😛

prisma sun
#

Every single one appealed to me

#

but teleporting and being Instinctively Flighty sinched it

bleak hazel
#

fun trick you might want to pick up at some point - once you hit Essence 3, taking three dots in Prismatic Arrangement gets you Ways of Exaltation, which is good for fighting and sneaking but also has the amazing little rider of letting you steal other Sid anima powers

#

5 motes 1 wp extra is probably worth paying for a big Secrets or Serenities greater sign at the right moment

#

of course it's slightly better for non-Journeys because the number one thing it's amazing for is allowing every Sidereal to hit the fast travel up to heaven

#

2 WP and 25 motes, but that's fine, just spend the weekend on paperwork and then get back out there

tulip folio
#

Are there any martial arts in 3e that provide notable non-combat effects? I know 2e had a few but 3e seems to have tried to Focus Them more directly on well...combat. XD

bleak hazel
#

Black Claw, Laughing Monster, Dreaming Pearl Courtesan, Silver-Voiced Nightingale and the capstones of Crane Style and Righteous Devil Style all do some level of social stuff

#

but it's not a ton

#

they are mostly ways to kill people with the occasional social action or social rewards for beating people normally

spring lynx
#

what about white veil

#

insert white veil joke here

bleak hazel
#

social stealth for your combat, but yeah, that one is the one big outlier

#

if you want really esoteric martial arts you need to look to the Sidereals, where you have one that makes you an amazing doctor as well as doing martial arts and one that has a whole bunch of generic utility in Prismatic

#

Throne Shadow and Emerald Gyre of Aeons also both come with training charms

tulip folio
#

Makes sense, as SMA are functionally more 'Extensions of the Sid charmset' than 'normal martial arts' in how they're treated

#

(Just ones that some people can sometimes get)

#

White Veil? No clue what that is.

bleak hazel
#

the big downside of Sidereal Martial Arts is that you lose the ability to wear non-Silken armour and that sucks, because Heavy Artifact Armour is insanely good

#

as is just having tons of soak in general

#

an E5 sid can use Prismatic to stick a couple of soakmonster forms to their SMAs and go up to like 30 soak anyway, but E3 and E4 can be a bit touch-and-go

#

I'm still trying to find efficient ways to get more

#

a Sid with maybe 20 soak, Ways of Exaltation and a few Sid Brawl picks can be incredibly hard to wither down but the hard part is getting that soak

tulip folio
#

...it does a feel a bit like there's no real distinction between 'no armour' and light armour' due to silk.

bleak hazel
#

yeah, there's no "medium armour, counts as light" without a very expensive hearthstone

#

still, wish I could figure out how to get more soak on this idiot

#

all these mote efficiency charms don't do much if I lose 8 initiative whenever someone lands a glove on me

tulip folio
#

Which is that hearthstone? I've missed that one.

#

Also: Man, nearly every single White Veil charm has Mastery. XD

bleak hazel
#

I swear it existed but I cannot for the life of me find it right now

#

while looking I found a rock for more soak, so I guess my Sid needs that, Silken Armour, Stam 5 and then something else nice

#

second rock gets me three more and some Hardness that doesn't do anything, up to 15 if I spend 8 entire motes

#

argh

tulip folio
#

Violet Bier of Sorrows looks fun. Looks very 'Ah fuck it, finishing off the wounded'

bleak hazel
#

it's a good one

#

just, again, watch the Soak

#

although Alchs might be able to do something about that

#

their attribute-based brethren certainly can

prisma sun
#

Mercury is the patron goddess of ADHD

tulip folio
#

Currently in that 'Hey, I should pick up X' state. Where I know I'm starting with Golden Jannisary

#

And then just sorta bouncing about other Staff-Acceptable Martial Arts trying to work out the next one after that gets finished/After I'm waiting for the essence increases to pick up the last parts of it.

bleak hazel
#

I am doing some incredibly stupid charop right now

#

my Sidereal needs soak

#

Lunars get soak from shapeshifting

#

therefore, use Eclipse charms to learn how to shapeshift, turn into a hippo and use this to do martial arts while transformed

#

I am not sure if this works but I really hope it does

tulip folio
#

Wood Dragon is off the list due to 'not a Dragonblooded' and 'If I want self-healing, I'll use nanomachines, not martial arts' despite being a Staff Style.

bleak hazel
#

...I do not think martial arts work while I am a hippo

#

ah well, it was worth a shot

#

oh hey, the Sids also get an anthem

#

everyone gets to play theirs in turn at the Exalted Games

prisma sun
#

I keep forgetting there's the "mental birth control" merit

bleak hazel
#

whenever I read the merit list I find it slightly funny that Cyberpunk RED of all games nickel-and-dimes the PCs way less for birth control than Exalted does

#

makes sense given the tech level, but still

#

that is the "game will beat you up and steal your money" RPG

prisma sun
#

I kinda wanna make my own artifact

#

for Drifts

bleak hazel
#

always fun

prisma sun
#

some kind of pair of gloves that interact with the Charcoal Spider Style

bleak hazel
#

Vigil's two-handed jian is a custom one

prisma sun
#

I think I've also decided I'm giving him Resources 0-1

#

because the person on payroll physically cannot find him to pay him

tulip folio
#

Not this character but Alchemical with Throne Shadow could be very funny some time.

#

Where you give them 'I know kung fu' injection via alch charms

#

And then they're instantly a skilled finger

bleak hazel
#

I believe I mentioned the Throne Shadow Metropolis idea before, yeah

#

"ATTENTION CITIZENS. WE ARE BEING ATTACKED BY A HORDE OF GREMLINS. THE PERFECTED MARTIAL MICRONEEDLE INSTRUCTION DRONES HAVE BEEN DEPLOYED. YOU WILL KNOW KUNG FU. MAY THE GREAT MAKER HAVE MERCY ON THEIR BLIGHTED SOULS, FOR THE POPULAT OF RIFIPE WILL NOT."

dense verge
#

wondering what good sources of hardness there are laying around that arent armor for like, deebs, or sids

bleak hazel
#

Silken Armour provides 4, which is enough to handle anima flux and not a lot else

#

there's a Hearthstone that you sink 8 XP and 3 motes into and it give you 3 soak/3 hardness, disabling when you take Decisive damage

dense verge
#

where is that?

tulip folio
#

Also: Do styles that work with Spears also work if I throw the spear?

bleak hazel
#

Caryatid Orb, arms of the chosen

#

"Body of Marble"

tulip folio
#

Pondering for Alchemical Railgun Weapon-Making Arm purposes.

bleak hazel
#

the big Sid one is Marked For The Gallows, but that's Essence 4 despite being very strong indeed (+5 soak, 10-ish hardness)

tulip folio
#

Also: One of the players in the Alch game had the funniest idea for a tie if you're playing an Alch in creation.

#

Negative Tie, <Exalt Name Here>, Tried To Attune Me.

bleak hazel
#

LMAO

#

oh yeah, and a bunch of Martial Arts forms give you soak

#

including Sid Brawl

dense verge
#

oh yeah, soak is easy

bleak hazel
#

a Sid Melee enjoyer using one of those is a bit charm-expensive

dense verge
#

everyone loves toad style

bleak hazel
#

but a brief pit stop for Snake Form wouldn't be an awful idea

dense verge
#

i was thinking of how to get hardness on the toad style deeb my secrets sid has around

bleak hazel
#

the only real issue there is that Serpentine Evasion is a wasted charm, Striking Cobra is pretty situational

#

Snake Form itself is a banger though

#

4 charms and E2 to get it + its direct upgrade

#

9 motes, 1 WP for 7 Soak, a -1 to -3 penalty against all enemy attacks and +2 to Withering damage

#

more soak as you level

#

you can then pick up Snake Strikes The Heel which is a wonderful withering clash

#

a fifth charm purchase gets you the ability to use dual hook-swords with both melee and martial arts so they mesh perfectly

#

I feel that 5 charms in Snake Style + a clean run through Sid Melee to hit Enlightenment ASAP is a reasonable if slightly heavy start-of-E3 combat suite

dense verge
#

honestly on mori if i expand her build beyond chargen i may want brawl in addition to violet bier on her

bleak hazel
#

Sid Brawl is very good, yeah

#

hmm

#

5 charms Snake Form, 1 charm weapon compatibility, 7 charms Sid melee, 2 ox-bodies

#

15 combat charms by E3, so about half your stuff

#

that sounds reasonable

#

round that out with 5 craft charms, some awareness, dash of integrity/investigate/bureaucracy

#

does waste four charms getting all your stuff working together but it's a very slick combo

#

I should probably stat this up, looks like 13 soak at E2 which is enough to at least take the edge off

#

best to buy all the snake style stuff with Sid XP

#

the only really painful thing is that your Onslaught negator is less good outside Sid Melee Form

#

only halves the penalty rather than eliminating it and adding +1 parry

dense verge
#

brawl just seems like it fits

bleak hazel
#

oh brawl just fits perfectly, with the minor downside of having to put your sword down

dense verge
#

i dont think i'd need to deal with solars using player character charmsets so im prob good

bleak hazel
#

oh yeah, it's unlikely at the best of times

#

I just like pushing uphill with the charop

dense verge
#

true true

bleak hazel
#

and if you can handle even a baby solar you're good for damn near anything else

#

no E2 sid can take the Invincible Sword Princess but you can do all right

#

there's this strange breakpoint at E4 where Sids suddenly become able to fuck off for five or six weeks, slap down the mother of all prophecies and give the Solar +1 target number on every single roll, at which point they become about 20% less killy

dense verge
#

yeah one thing i appreciate in the NPC stat blocks is that they aren't symmetrical to PCs with what charms they have

bleak hazel
#

lower essence Sids can only penalize one roll per scene with a prophecy, so it's a pretty gargantuan jump

tulip folio
# 
Transient Works of Flesh and Bone
Cost: 10m, 1 WP; Mins: Charisma 4, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One scene
The Raksha rolls (Charisma + [Performance, Craft or War]) against difficulty 1. Success conjures a Size 1 battle group of Brigands or Battle-Ready Troops with Average Drill and Might 0. The Raksha may spend additional successes for the following bonuses:

1 Successes: Add a mundane action of the Raksha's choice at 6 Dice.
2 Successes: Increase the Size by 1, to a maximum of (essence) Size
3 Successes: Increase Traits to Elite Troops, Assassins or Medium Cavalry.
3 Successes: Increase Drill to Elite.
3 Successes: Increase Might by +1, to a maximum of +2

Minions crafted with this charm will obey orders even outside of combat, with it not uncommon for Raksha to spin entire courts out of these transient imitations. Weapons of Iron to Aggravated Damage to creatures formed this way.

Calling The Dance Of Blades
Mins: Charisma 5, Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None
The Raksha gains a number of non-charm successes on Transient Works of Flesh and Bone equal to 1+ the highest Might among battle groups opposing them in this scene. The cost of increasing Traits, Drill and Might with Transient Works of Flesh and Bone are reduced by 1 Success.

Tinkered with this a hair. They now get a little more choice in the unit type and clarified you can 100% use them for anything that you'd use a group of mooks for outside of a fight but also: They're creations of the Raksha so Iron is their bane like anything else Raksha.

#

So now your Raksha can spend a success on 'Serves Drinks' at 6 dice when company is over 😛

tulip folio
# 
Forked Tongue Mien
Cost: 3m, 1wp; Mins: Manipulation 4, Essence 2
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Mute
Duration: Instant
When the Raksha is the target of a Read Intentions action or magic that would determine the truthfulness of her words and is not actively lying, she may increase her Guile by (Essence) against that effect. If she successfully defends, the target sees that she is being truthful not just in letter but in spirit as well.

The may be used to support attempts to deceive with entirely truthful words or by deliberately withholding facts to provide an incorrect assumption, as long as she is not lying in the express letter of her word.

Misunderstood Role Meditation
Mins: Manipulation 5, Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite: Forked Tongue Mien
This upgrades the prerequisite charm, allowing it to defend against any attempt to identify the Intimacies of the Raksha if the Raksha has not yet lied this scene. On a successful defence, the target sees the Intimacy that the Raksha chooses, even if it does not exist. Attempting to a leverage an intimacy that does not exist on a Raksha in support of an influence has the opposite effect, increasing Resolve as if it was an intimacy against the action.

Powerful but also Rather Limited as it requires you be Actively Not Lying while you're deceiving people.

tulip folio
#

...Thousand Blade Style seems cute, though the buy in of 'Like 15-20 dots worth of artifact swords' seems like a lot. XD

upper stratus
#

the trick is to take them from your dead and broken enemies

bleak hazel
#

Or make them yourself

#

It's extremely strong when ramped, one of the strongest martial arts

upper stratus
#

[trying really hard to ignore wyld-shaping technique] gotta get the materials first

tulip folio
#

These are very important for any gundam 😛

bleak hazel
#

Underworld-Shaping Technique is way more reasonable if you just want soulsteel

#

Abyssals are great at building stuff

tulip folio
#

Are piles of corpses a stuff?

bleak hazel
#

it only makes doom-themed stuff but you can do that yeah

#

also you're an Abyssal, learn some necromancy already

tulip folio
#

This seems pretty good for keeping you with a Real Mote Pool. Won't stack with thousand blades unsheathed but 3 is better than 1 mote discount.

image.png
bleak hazel
#

Thousand Blades reduces weapons after the first to one, so you're actually good without

tulip folio
#

Oh, right.

#

It's to 1

#

Not by 1.

#

I might pick up the first charm of Thousand Blades for now and look into the rest later. As the first charm alone seems pretty cool just for vibes.

prisma sun
#

Thousand Blades does look neat as hell

tulip folio
#

Alright so now my character has Thousand Blades and Golden Jannisary. Golden Jannisary Form. Golden Jannisary is More Situational but in Autobot city, not that situational.

prisma sun
#

I kinda wish I could count Golden Jannissary as enemies of fate instead of Creatures of Darkness

tulip folio
#

I'm kinda lucky as 'everything gremlin' is both.

#

As it's connected to the emerging neverborn the The Engine Of Destruction.

bleak hazel
#

not Thousand Blades Form?

#

Thousand Blades Form is great

tulip folio
#

Luckily this being Autobot City, it's not exactly lacking in 'availability of artifact weapons'

prisma sun
#

Which book has Thousand Blades again?

bleak hazel
#

Many-Faced Strangers

tulip folio
#

Sword-Shrike’s Garden looks really cool.

bleak hazel
#

it's a great way to get some injuries on target without having to decisive

tulip folio
#

It seems like a good thing to set up for my 'I'm going to go command my army now' alch.

#

'Here is my wall of blades and my battlegroup. They're going to solve the problem for me'

sick kraken
#

Oh, huh, I didn't know Many-Faced Strangers was a thing, I'll add it to my list for when it goes on sale

bleak hazel
#

highly funny lunar button, the "stop the solars blowing up the city" roll

image.png
#

this is an interesting one because Sidereal prophecies are Extended rolls that let them add up the successes from at least 5 different casting rolls, so deflecting a Big Prophecy with this one is going to require the Lunar to straight up slam 30 successes down with a single Introduce Fact roll

#

which they basically will not do

#

this is specifically for mini prophecies like Solar "pronounce doom" charms or the lesser fate-warping Sid charms that they can just pop while running around

bleak hazel
#

@tulip folio found the armour-lightening hearthstone, although it's extremely expensive

image.png
#

Dependent means you need another hearthstone socketed in the same thing to make it work

#

so six merit dots across two hearthstones, although you can go up to 7 and get a powerful manse for one merit dot

dense verge
#

aha, the light armor de-armorer

bleak hazel
#

if all you want is light armour, you should just get Silken Armour, it's less expensive

#

but what this does let you do is make Stompy the Fire Dragon, in heavy articulated plate

#

what the fuck, Lunar armour in AOTC

image.png
#

you mean I can get a one-handed greatsword if I somehow become resonant with moonsilver?

#

I'm a Sid, that's easy, time to rock and roll

#

(this is a joke, but it would be possible)

#

honestly I really hate the number of non-Ori artifacts in AOTC that have half their evocations dedicated to enhancing Solar charms

#

sure, you can write different ones for different exalt types but that defeats the point of having a big book of artifacts in the first place

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

well, it only knocks it down to Light

#

so you can't do most martial arts in it

tulip folio
#

Oh yeah, I mean how silk is treated as one degree less for martial arts.

bleak hazel
#

I will probably have to brew up my own Silken Armour for my Sidereal because the one existing example is very much not useful

tulip folio
#

Meanwhile the corebook has the armour where I go 'Why does your bonus exist?'

#

You're already 4 dot light armour. Why are you Just Not Silken Armour?

image.png
lunar magnet
#

Martial Arts.

bleak hazel
#

silken armour counts as unarmoured for the purpose of doing martial arts

#

the only thing the 7 mote attunement of Freedom's Cadence does for you is get you a couple of minor bonuses on defensive charms that care about whether you're truly unarmoured rather than "unarmoured for the purpose of martial arts"

tulip folio
#

I suppose I'll just mark that one down to 'corebook, people likely didn't talk about everything with each other'

bleak hazel
#

hmm

#

nah, this Unison gimmick won't work

#

by the time you can get it going it would work better to just do other stuff with all those motes

#

Sid armour is hard

#

no, no, no, bad alchemical book

image.png
#

even starmetal artifacts are not allowed to do this because Solars go insane when their dice stacking is combined with any kind of TN manipulation

#

also once again things are stepping on the gimmick of Sidereals

#

I suppose if it's autocthonia only it's all right

tulip folio
#

Oh, the Potentiality Gauntlets?

bleak hazel
#

I can think of one fairly trivial way to allow this to make seven max power smash attacks with base damage 10, almost certainly hurling the enemy to long range and stacking a bunch of fall damage on top of that

image.png
#

best of 5 attack rolls is a fairly strong chance to just hit with all of these straight up

bleak hazel
#

very clearly Autobot Only Design

tulip folio
#

Are there any artifacts that play with 'Life and Death'? Trying to get Inspiration for my character's Artifact's evocations. XD

#

There's a lot of Abyssal 'DEATH TIME' ones but I'm thinking more 'how life and death are part of the same cycle'

prisma sun
#

Hmmm

#

I think there's something in Arms of the Chosen?

#

Can't recall

spring lynx
#

i don't know if there is, but going looking made me realize arms of the chosen does have, essentially, the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, except it's a full suit of armour

tulip folio
#

oh?

spring lynx
tulip folio
#

Ah yeah, that's fun.

upper stratus
prisma sun
#

Green jade Hilt

#

Soulsteel blade

tulip folio
#

Hah, in this case it's Ori + Soulsteel.

upper stratus
#

although tbh actually i feel soulsteel represents a corruption and subvertion of the natural cycle

#

trapping a buncha souls in a metal to begin with y'know

tulip folio
#

True but there isn't really a 'Death But Healthy' material.

upper stratus
#

starmetal harvested from the constellation of the corpse but also idk how that'd work in autochtonia

tulip folio
#

Yeah, all metals in Autobot city come from digging them up from veins within his body.

#

Which means he's also got some of the only non-human resources soulsteel

upper stratus
#

finally

#

ethical soulsteel

tulip folio
upper stratus
#

yay!

tulip folio
#

My current character is fucking terrified of it because she's A) A Necromancer B) Not an asshole.

prisma sun
#

Is it ethical if you're like

#

Stealing a guy's blood

tulip folio
#

It's pretty ethical if the guy said you can have his blood and went to take a nap.

spring lynx
#

also the guy is a higher-dimensional being who probably doesn't even really consciously understand the concept of blood, or the harvesting thereof

bleak hazel
#

building an Essence 3 crafter/diplomat Abyssal for an Exalted campaign has led me to a method that I am pretty sure can make you hotter than the Unconquered Sun

#
  • There are three indefinite-length charms that grant extra dots of Appearance above 5, so cast those (Sanguine Revel Celebrant, Beauty in Bleak Despair, Perfumed Prince Demeanour)
  • Hit the Void Circle necromancy spell Birth of Sanity's Sorrow (+2 dots, Hideous merit)
  • Summon the Seat of Deadly Splendor from Ivory Circle necromancy and sit on it (+1 dot, can choose to suppress the Hideous merit if you have it)
#

boom, appearance 11

#

I don't have the 2e book with Conky's stats in but IIRC he had 10 in everything

#

nevermind, a friend has helped me out with that, 2e Unconquered Sun had Appearance 8 - you are are significantly hotter than the sun, and can become merely slightly hotter at Essence 2

tulip folio
#

As long as you're in the Cool Chair

#

Otherwise you stop being hot

bleak hazel
#

if you stick with only matching the sun rather than absolutely blowing him out of the firmament with how good your cheekbones are, you can do this while walking around

#

but yes, if you go for the full combo, the moment you stand up you go from Appearance 11 to Appearance minus 10

#

and become the most terrifying thing Creation has seen since the Primordial War

wise ocean
#

That is exceptionally cool, however.

bleak hazel
#

it is extremely Abyssal

#

I am not sure I can afford all the charms necessary to hit Appearance 9 on this character while still doing all the other noncombat stuff I want to do

#

I can definitely hit 8

prisma sun
#

what do you mean they gave Sol stats

bleak hazel
#

yeah, he had stats, it was incredibly stupid

#

so did all the other Incarna

tulip folio
#

iirc, Literally Everything He Did was considered perfect, so you couldn't actually beat him because every defence of his was a perfect defence.

unless you put him in a scenario where the flaw of his perfect defence came in.

#

And I vaguely recall that flaw being really fucking annoying

#

Something to do with 'violating his own virtues' or something?

bleak hazel
#

yeah, he had every virtue at 5, making them super-strict, and if you maneuvered him into doing a thing contrary to each of them he would have to suppress them all and then he would be vulnerable to a boss fight

#

and possibly turn into a giant dragon made of explosions as a second phase, I can never figure out whether that was actually in the book or just the author blowing smoke on the forums

#

I don't actually have that one

spring lynx
bleak hazel
#

Glories of the Most High, for Sol

#

although I'd appreciate the Appearance stats of the other incarna

#

I suspect Abyssal McCheekbones is not actually prettier than Luna or the Maidens but it would be really funny if they were

spring lynx
#

i mean, he can appear as a giant dragon made of explosions, and it might actually be his true form

#

but i think you're probably talking about Sun Turns His Face

#

(as for the godspear mentioned in the latter half of that)

image.png
bleak hazel
#

that might be it, yes

spring lynx
#

the maidens all have appearance 10, and luna has 15, by the way

bleak hazel
#

OK, so Abyssal Pretty-boy is prettier than the maidens

#

that is extremely silly

spring lynx
#

barely

#

and to be fair, the maidens probably aren't terribly concerned with mortal standards of beauty

bleak hazel
#

yeah, this is not really their primary deal and Appearance is not just the "being hot" stat anyway

#

it's just a great source of surprisingly plausible boasts

#

"yeah I beat Venus in a beauty contest"

#

(probably because she let you)

next delta
#

Being prettier than something named Venus always ends well right?

bleak hazel
#

Well, you're an Abyssal, you're already a horrific monstrosity beyond the span of fate sworn to twisted entities beyond human comprehension

#

I don't think she was going to like you at first glance but the Maidens have done stranger things

spring lynx
# bleak hazel (probably because she let you)

oh yeah, it doesn't really matter how pretty you are, you're going to lose to her unless she lets you. she also has 10 performance, and a charm that lets her add 20 flat successes to any roll if it aligns with her motivation. and another charm that lets her just decide "actually, my target number is 4 and yours is 9, because i said so"

wise ocean
#

Generally this is called "Grecian hubris" and you're narratively punished by the gods for it

bleak hazel
#

"congratulations Mr Abyssal, you're now God of Eerie Beauty, report to work on Monday"

bleak hazel
#

I don't think I have 11 charm slots free in this build to fit the entire beauty contest suite but I'll have to see if any of the prereqs to those are worth having anyway

spring lynx
prisma sun
#

The Gods did it first

bleak hazel
#

The Sids have at least two or three charms to appoint either themselves or other people to godly positions but I'm not sure any of them work on Exalts, I'll have to check

#

possibly not, I remember promoting yourself to a makework god job and promoting your familiar that you made into a minor divinity with a previous charm

spring lynx
#

at the very least i know for a fact that one of UCS's edicts is "exalted rule creation, gods rule heaven"

prisma sun
#

Sidreals can have jobs but can't rule in Heaven

#

Exalts can't do that

#

Yeah

bleak hazel
#

The creation-ruling mandate is still around, yeah

prisma sun
#

So that's why none of the Sidreals lead the Beauru of Destiny

bleak hazel
#

not that I think this should get in the way of a perfectly good sitcom episode

spring lynx
#

well, not officially anyway

bleak hazel
#

"congratulations, you are now the assistant to the God of Eerie Beauty " if necessary

prisma sun
#

I believe even Ketchup only advises

#

The Gods are appointed by the Maidens

#

so you can't really pull any kind of rank

bleak hazel
#

between the Sids and the Heaven's Dragons it's pretty clear Exalts can work for various heavenly entities

spring lynx
#

actually, on a more pedantic note, i don't think exalted can ascend to godhood by any means

#

like, they might be able to take on the responsibilities of a god, but they can't become A God

bleak hazel
#

there are like fifteen Sid charms to pull rank on gods or in one case give yourself a godly position

#

That's one thing they genuinely do all the time

#

doesn't come with a sanctum and all the other powers, though

spring lynx
#

that's what i mean

bleak hazel
#

Yes, pedantry accepted, very good

spring lynx
#

like, there are stories of mortals ascending to godhood as in "they stopped being human and became a god"

bleak hazel
#

I did like the various heavenly deities in the new Sid book, there are some good gods in there

spring lynx
#

but i'm pretty sure exalted... can't do that, because mumble mumble exaltation

bleak hazel
#

Yeah, they don't do that, although evidently their ghosts are pretty juiced because of the whole deathlords thing

spring lynx
#

deathlords are weird. like, they're the ghosts of powerful exalted, right? but exalted stop being exalted when they die because the exaltation is an extra soul stapled onto their existing souls

next delta
bleak hazel
#

their other bits of soul are also incredibly strong, "whoops, essence 10 hungry ghost" is the standard first age tomb thing

next delta
#

Ghosts of powerful exalted are still often strong even if they don't have the exalted part of the soul anymore

bleak hazel
#

Also makes some sense anyway, since dying clearly sets the exaltation itself back to square 1

spring lynx
#

i always figured that was just a matter of the exalt having to learn how to harness the power of their new soul

next delta
#

I wonder if the deathlords tried to steal their own exaltations when they heisted solar souls from the jade prison

spring lynx
#

like, the power's always there, you just don't know how to use it when you've only had it stuck to you for a few days/years/centuries