#Exalted

1 messages · Page 7 of 1

bleak hazel
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Sure, but it then makes a certain amount of sense that the old souls that have been bathed in sun juice and heroism for centuries are rather meaner than ordinary souls

spring lynx
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i thought it was the yozis who did the actual heisting and the neverborn just built the heist van

bleak hazel
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Some of the deathlords might not have been Solars even, although I think it varies edition to edition

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the Bishop made a Sidereal Martial Art so he might be an ex-Siddy

bleak hazel
spring lynx
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oh, yeah, i guess i should probably point out that the vast majority of my exalted knowledge is 2e-based

bleak hazel
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Some mention is made of the deathlords all showing up to do the ritual (and the yozis being stiffed out of the agreed 50/50 split of the take, I think, but I could be misremembering)

spring lynx
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back in 2e the agreement was always a 2:1 split for the neverborn, but the yozi went about corrupting their share more thoroughly so they ended up with the better deal

bleak hazel
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until they started turning into baby primordials, anyway

next delta
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Looks like 3E has the Yozi at being less effective at corrupting people

bleak hazel
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although depending on the yozi they may consider that an upgrade

spring lynx
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i was about to say, a lot of them fuckers don't actually care if they're the ones on the throne anymore, as long as it's A Primordial

next delta
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iirc Essence notes the Yozi's don't understand humans and that their plan is to just pick really angry people who experienced an injustice and assume they will also want to burn everything down

bleak hazel
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and teddie the magic dragon hates every outcome because that's kind of his thing

next delta
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(many will, but some won't)

bleak hazel
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Infernals as guided missiles is an interesting take on them honestly

tulip folio
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I am curious about how they're planning on making Infernals...distinct from Solars in 3e.

spring lynx
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not even guided, really

next delta
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I think less guided missile and more unguided bomb lol

tulip folio
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As 'Angry people who suffered an injustice' is like 80% of Solar backstories. XD

bleak hazel
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They get the coadjutors

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very vague guidance

spring lynx
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shit, that's like 80% of celestial exalted backstories total

bleak hazel
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also the excellencies trigger only when being suitably Infernal

spring lynx
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the remainder being freaks and non-endings sids

tulip folio
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Abyssal: "I'm angry and suffered an injustice. That injustice is called death."

next delta
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iirc, their essence charmset isn't great at being directly helpful

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Unless you want dead people

spring lynx
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dead people can be useful!

bleak hazel
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Endings can actually be chill nowadays, although they tended to be morbid weirdos in childhood

tulip folio
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😛

bleak hazel
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Dead people can be so useful in exalted

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in most universes you only get one necromantic beastie per dead guy

spring lynx
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yeah, in exalted you can get like, three!

bleak hazel
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in exalted you can zombify the corpse, raise the lower soul as a hungry ghost and the higher soul as a war ghost and get triple efficiency

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admittedly the zombie is still a zombie but hey, good enough for Skullstone

spring lynx
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might have some trouble with the hungy tho

tulip folio
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But yeah...I think my concern with the tack they're talking Infernals is sorta 'What do they do that Solars don't?/Why would you go for an Infernal over an Angry Solar who has Literally The Most Common First Circle Spell for demon summoning?'. In 2e, they were very Sideways to Solars, not really working with the same general areas at all (Not even being an ability-based exalt).

bleak hazel
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There's actually a Necromancy spell now that incidentally makes them cool with you when you learn it

tulip folio
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I hope I'm wrong, as Infernals were my favorite splat.

next delta
bleak hazel
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"hungry ghost handler" is a valid Abyssal deal, which I find fun

tulip folio
bleak hazel
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My current daybreak is going to be slinging a lot of spells in combat because he can't fight for toffee so I will need that one

spring lynx
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but how much hubris will he have

dense verge
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what infernals have going for me in 3e is that they're going to have charms that are designed well, and have impetus and direction on what to do from the get-go other than a vague "do an imperialism", like how lunars have a guerilla war, or sidereals have a job

bleak hazel
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Lots, but he can do N/A tier crafting, he can make really good wax wings

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I was tempted by Thousand Blades Style but I'm not sure I want more than three or so combat charms

tulip folio
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I honestly feel the opposite with Infernals. They feel like they've got less thematic identity than before and have lost their entire mechanical identity, which was a lot of their appeal to me.

I hope I'm wrong but also...I dunno. I've not seen anything so far that isn't just 'This is a green solar but his charmset wasn't literally the first one made'.

Sorry for being a bit sour on them.

dense verge
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ahh i get that

next delta
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Yeah, unfortunately if you liked the old way the charms worked it probably won't be that way

tulip folio
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It's like me and the redone Demon. Even if it's good, it's looking like it's not going to be...well, what I wanted out of a New Infernals/Demon

next delta
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AIUI there was a lot of sketchy stuff in the Infernal splat? They might have thrown the baby out with the bathwater in dealing with that?

tulip folio
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Oh yeah, there was some shitty edgelord bullshit too. There's a reason people go 'chapter 2 (iirc) doesn't exist'.

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But well...I found the way their charmset worked fascinating and I'm kinda salty that not only is that likely gone, there is no exalt with that sorta theme-based charmset.

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Sorry

dense verge
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oh no need to apologize, i just feel differently on it

tulip folio
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...if both Abyssals and Infernals are getting 'Solars but Less Nice', when do we get the More Nice Solar splat? 😛

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As Solars are not really Notably Nice in thier mechanics.

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So clearly solars are 'neutral' nice 😛

next delta
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Abyssals are Solars but sad. Infernals are Solars but Angry

tulip folio
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...ironically, Infernals would likely have more legs in any other era of exalted than the age of sorrows. XD

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As the age of sorrows is when Solars are themselves guys angry at the current state of the world and having it work against them.

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In an era where solars are not already angry and fighting society, angry fighting society solars might be more distinct.

tulip folio
dense verge
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oh with the solars i mean, there's a vaguely there but not really push to make a kingdom or such

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with the infernals there's drive there to do vengeance for the thing that you were exalted for, and then maybe follow that up with a demon king type deal maybe

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infernals also got hooks into malfeas as a faction

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solars, maybe, have hooks into whichever culture group they were born in?

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maybe a cult?

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solars are hard for me to get my head around for hooking into the world for drives

tulip folio
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Which sorta sadly for Solars runs into 'Congrats, you have hooks into whatever culture you're from. Everyone has that, it comes with being born into a culture'. XD

dense verge
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yeah, that too

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solars do culture hero thing maybe?

tulip folio
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I desperately hope even if they don't let them have the weird charmsets they keep the way Infernals interacted with Limit.

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Acts of Villiany were just the hammiest, goofiest things and I fucking loved them.

dense verge
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there's their limit breaks in essence where they go full demon king mode and do VILLAINOUS ACTS

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so thats a good sign

tulip folio
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I'll admit, that's sorta my concern.

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2e Infernals didn't have Limit Breaks

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That's a Solar thing.

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They instead had 'Your toxic nature causes harm to people you care about if you let limit get too high, without forcing your actions to change'

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With the Acts of Villiany being mitigation

next delta
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Essence I think gives everyone limit break as a simplification. E.g. Alchemicals have that instead of Clarity in it

dense verge
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aha i see

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so there may be a form of that since clarity is around in the alch draft

tulip folio
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I hope so, as Villainous Acts were a great way of having players voluntarily fuck up their own plans.

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'Hmm...I could kill this guy...or if I explain to him my plan and leave him alive, sure that he can't stop me, I'll recover some limit...'

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It was also great for producing long-term antagonists.

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Loviatar, my Infernal, ended up with a Solar Nemesis because rather than killing the Sorcerer who was manipulating the kingdom she was trying to help...she explained to her exactly what she was/why this was never a fair fight and then tossed her into an entrance to Malfeas sure that she'd never turn up again. XD

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Something that I'm not sure I'd have considered having her doing if there wasn't a Mechanical Framework going 'Hey, have you considered rubbing your victory in rather than securing it, for a bonus?'

upper stratus
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they kept abyssal limit being a wee bit funky in the drafts they're probably gonna do some shit for infernals too

tulip folio
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You know what the funniest thing with Thousand Blades/the trickiest part of it? Working out how to fluff up some weapons as a big floating combo. XD

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Still, I figured it out for staff weapons eventually.

tulip folio
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...you know, it's kinda surprising that martial arts didn't get anything like sorcery with your 'Hey, here is your way you initiated/some shinies for it'. Considering it's a hefty dots sink just to 'get the ability to learn martial arts' and it and Sorcery were both Paths to Enlightement in 2e.

upper stratus
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it's kinda funny since sorcery is cheaper too

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but it's not like you can gather martial artious motes

tulip folio
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Would be kinda fun if mortals could, as mortal martial artists mostly go 'Wait, why am I not just a brawler? I can't even use any of these martial arts?'

upper stratus
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well they could get unique ma weapons but yea

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2e had rules for mortals with enlightened essence doing actual (terrestrial) martial arts charms but they all had like. 10 motes in the pool max

tulip folio
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I think part of my pondering is thematics. Sorcery and Martial Arts in 2e both being treated as Enlightenment Paths made them both 'Mortal+ but not full exalt' but Sorcery kept it while Martial Arts didn't.

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If that remotely makes sense?

upper stratus
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yeag

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access to unique merits would be cool though although you obviously can't make one for every martial art

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that's too much stuff

tulip folio
upper stratus
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'trained by the year and one day sidereal hell training'

bleak hazel
tulip folio
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And I can have them be Double-Ended Lightsaber Buzzsaws.

bleak hazel
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I have considered Thousand Blades + charcoal march of spiders but they do kind of do the same things

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I wish I could buy Sidereal enlightenment charms for non-Sidereal martial arts, you get kind of screwed on the compatibility below essence 5

tulip folio
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Sidereal Enlightenment Charms?

bleak hazel
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since Prismatic Arrangement of Creation doesn't take any weapons or and none of them take armour

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Each Sidereal combat ability has a charm that lets you use said combat tree with a Sidereal Martial Art, ignoring weapon and charm compatibility rules

tulip folio
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Ah, that's cool

prisma sun
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I wanna make the "One Immaculate Monk who is trying to learn Sidreal martial arts" canon to my games

bleak hazel
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the annoying thing is that using that to make, say, Prismatic work with swords only lets it work with Sid Melee, you can't use Prismatic with other sword martial arts

tulip folio
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So they're the only guys who get to play about with 'What weapons can be used for a martial art'?

bleak hazel
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which makes Sid martial arts masters kind of frustrating to build below Essence 5, where there's a charm that just says "fuck it, everything is compatible, take three forms at once"

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that charm is in prismatic, the martial art that isn't compatible with anything, so you go through four essence levels of not wanting anything other than Sid Melee + Prismatic and then suddenly get told "the world's your oyster, go buy all these E1 charms of other martial arts now you're E5"

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Only Prismatic really does this, if you want to mix stuff with CMOS or whatever it actually accepts various weapons so you can do fun stuff

tulip folio
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Ooof

bleak hazel
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the issue is that I like Prismatic a lot, if I preferred Obsidian Shards or CMOS I could at least pull out some knives or khatars or whatever

prisma sun
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Can't you also just spend a charm to learn the charm to learn the charms?

bleak hazel
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Enlightenment buys you weapon compatibility between a combat ability and a Sid martial art, but it doesn't let you use other martial arts that use that weapon with the Sid Martial Art, it's strictly a two way deal

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so if you want Sid Melee + Prismatic - fine, great, if you want to add a little Snake Style or Violet Bier to that you're out of luck

upper stratus
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love me seven section staff

bleak hazel
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you end up with snake style being compatible with sid melee, sid melee being compatible with prismatic but prismatic not being compatible with snake style

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very irritating

upper stratus
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yea it annoyed me too that actual martial artists are the ones that struggle the most with compatibility

bleak hazel
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doesn't help that the compatibility rules are not particularly clear

tulip folio
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I find the seven section staff annoying because it makes me mistake what martial arts work with my staff when glancing through various options. XD

upper stratus
bleak hazel
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if I have Snake Form on, which is strictly a soak + malus to attack rolls against me deal, am I allowed to punch someone with Prismatic, am I allowed to parry with Prismatic despite the malus applying to the attack against my parry, what's going on here

tulip folio
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'Okay, this one works with staffs...oh, seven section'

bleak hazel
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it's clean when it's "cannot combine charm X and charm Y" most of the time, but it gets a bit blurry with scenelongs and so forth

upper stratus
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pretty sure you can mix and match various MAs however you like

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as long as you're meeting each one's weapon/armor restrictions

# 
Martial Arts cannot be combined with other combat
Abilities, they can be freely combined with one another,
limited only by the constraints of style weapons and armor
restrictions (see below).``` byea
tulip folio
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The other thing that keeps confusing me: When a martial art says it works with spears is that ALSO short spears or just the weapon just named spear?

bleak hazel
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just spear, I think, short spear is explicitly called out in one of the autobot martial arts

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It also uses the meteor hammer, rope dart, short spear and spear.

bleak hazel
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She can use it with all Melee weapons, though this doesn’t make it compatible with other styles that use them (unless the Sidereal also purchases this Charm for them)

tulip folio
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Right. I'm real glad the GM said 'Look, the wrackstaff/grimscythe swapping weapon counts as both for martial arts, so you won't lose Golden Janissary for a slightly wrong polearm'. XD

bleak hazel
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so it's Not Compatible with snake form, so presumably if I use a snake style charm all my stuff just suffers a divide by zero error and falls off?

upper stratus
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i guess yea

bleak hazel
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despite the fact I can use this weapon/armour combo with every one of my three styles

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a bit jank

upper stratus
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back in the good old days we have a martial art that's dogshit except for the capstone that makes all your martial arts compatible with everything forever

bleak hazel
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this could be immediately smoothed over by removing the word "Sidereal" from the Enlightenment charms so I could buy enlightenment for snek too

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which I think would be cool

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let the sids get weird with it

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since if you have multiple Enlightenment charms for multiple martial arts they all work with each other

tulip folio
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On the topic of weapons: How big a deal is the extra damage of heavy weapons? They seem to lose a LOT getting there with parry and accuracy and extra motes attuning.

bleak hazel
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they are generally the sad ones of the lot, it is true

tulip folio
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I guess if the other guy is an absolute unit you need to cleave in half they're useful for getting past soak and hardness.

spring lynx
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not an uncommon issue in exalted, tbf

bleak escarp
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Yeah, soak builds stronk

bleak hazel
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my number 1 issue with making Sid builds is that I can never get enough soak

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martial-arts related suffering

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Lunars on the other hand just turn into a pestletail and shoot up to 27 soak or something at E1

prisma sun
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Fuck With Me

bleak hazel
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at higher levels, Sids do get to turn their fists into tactical nuclear weapons and reach Overwhelming 13 base, 18 for 2m

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so it's not like they're without tricks

bleak hazel
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so you can just animorph into a dinosaur and flurry five heaven thunder hammers at a guy

dense verge
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toad style my beloved

next delta
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That much overwhelming is pretty hilarious

bleak hazel
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fists of fury

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I'm sure you can make it go higher

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that's just with the stuff that's immediately available to someone who has maxed Prismatic Form

next delta
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That's good damage if you aren't super optimised, but on a miss right?

prisma sun
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Teleport

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Ankylosaurus can just do this:

bleak hazel
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overwhelming is "dice you roll even if they have infinity soak"

prisma sun
bleak hazel
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lots of post-soak damage boosters too

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it's why you don't need a deranged amount of soak for high essence combat, because most people will have a good number of soakbusters at that point

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you just need enough to take the edge off because otherwise someone's going to smack you with a daiklaive and do like 20 initiative damage with 40 dice

# 
withering attack, before the damage roll. The amount 
of Initiative she loses from the attack is reduced by 
(higher of Essence or 3), although her attacker still receives the full amount. If this prevents the Sidereal from 
losing any Initiative, she gains one Initiative.```
although if I can get the martial arts compatibilities working right I still think there's a built to be had with this Brawl move
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at E4 you can combine this with a Form that puts your essence up by 2 for charm calcs, as well as allowing you to trade init in for motes

next delta
bleak hazel
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a normal hit with a medium artifact melee weapon will be dealing 13-17 base damage with 4-5 overwhelming

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depending on weapon type and user strength

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so basically you have normal swings that just ignore soak

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this is also why I keep trying to finagle Hostility Acceptance Technique into my builds

next delta
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Sidereal taps you on the stomach and you get the wind knocked out of you

bleak hazel
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a base 5-overwhelming sword swing just does not do init damage if you have enough soak and use that

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the main issue is that the shit I want to combo doesn't use any Brawl weapons so you'd need at least three arms

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which is not impossible to get, in Exalted, but kind of a pain

wise ocean
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you could go to four arms and then proclaim yourself an emperor or something, even

prisma sun
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I mean you can just buy them at character generation

bleak hazel
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you can also take the E4 Occult charm that lets you pay 5 motes 1 wp to enter warform

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gaining eclipse charms, 10 dots of mutations and a teeny tiny intimacy imposed upon you by a bound horror sealed within your body

prisma sun
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You can just pretend to be a Solar and fuse with a Lunar

bleak hazel
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this build is kind of Lunar cosplay now I think about it

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you swap your anima to that of a Lunar, commit like 33 motes and go war form

dense verge
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redesign your.......

bleak hazel
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redesign your lunar 2

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sidereal edition

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wait you can be a centaur

dense verge
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carcinization

bleak hazel
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you lose the extra extra limbs for brawl combos but you gain a flat +1 to attack and defence

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putting you at resting defence 11 (Base 7, Exalt Ways +2, centaur +1, stunt +1)

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work hard, solar boy

upper stratus
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my beautiful reaching tag

bleak hazel
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OK, yeah, unless they have an especially long stick

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which tend to be nicely low accuracy bonus

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OK, base soak 5, +5 artifact armour, +5 war-form, maybe a hearthstone to get you up to 17

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easy money

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only have to commit half your motes at E4 to go full kill mode

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now if only I had more reflexive clashes

upper stratus
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actually why doesn't rain of unseen threads have reaching. they're literally reaching

prisma sun
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They're thrown weapons

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cuz you shoot them

upper stratus
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oh right

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but i can put my 3-section staff in the threads and then swing it at someone from medium range

prisma sun
# 

A gong sounds.

Invisible strings spread from all ten of Drifts in Gossamer's fingers, rising like a rearing cobra before darting across the battlefield, carrying the warm scent of spicebush with them.

A gong sounds. 

Each string finds the heart of a hundred men. Fate holds death at bay, but the pain remains. One can feel the thread sewing itself through every nerve and vein, spreading from the heart to replace all that Is You. 

A gong sounds.

The threads join together in brotherhood, rising once more into a beautious geometric web, a painting on a canvas of void. Each one carries every Maiden-shade along it's length, a brilliant kaleidoscopic rainbow of impending oblivion.

A gong sounds.

And with that Drifts strums the air, fingertips lightly plucking the strings, the First and Last Chord that will ever sound in Creation's ear. 

A rainbow of fire spreads through the chords. Every ten-and-ten men is engulfed heart, body, and soul. 

Nothing sounds then. 
The journey is over.```
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If you ever come up with combos in Exalted you MUST turn them into cool finishers

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If you need help imagining this just picture "Benevolent Shrine"

tulip folio
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I swear I've spent longer trying to get backstories/mechanics for my characters artifacts than my character themselves. :S

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I miss when artifacts could be generic

spring lynx
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it definitely made having armour that didn't completely suck easier

tulip folio
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This game would really benefit from 'Here is a heap of generic evocations of each essence you can lego together into your toy to fit the themes'

spring lynx
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hell, it would benefit from "here's some starting points for some evocations you can lego together"

tulip folio
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It doesn't help that the 'Book of artifacts' is 90% 'upgrade this solar charm'.

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Which doesn't work if you're not a solar

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And makes trying to use that as a baseline real hard

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We've got players who've never played 3e and a GM who's played 3e but never run it before and this is really making things drag out in chargen.

bleak escarp
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In practice I think most people use the existing artifacts.

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But yes, 3e turned artifacts into essentially martial art styles, and the result is cool but I maintain that the better solution would've been to turn martial arts into 2e style artifacts.

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It was the late Aaron Peori's idea originally; reimagine learning a martial art as 'crafting' the practitioner's body into a weapon, and boil each style down to the two or three most thematically significant effects. Your seasons of crafting time is now training, your exotic ingredients are things like wizened old mentors, spiritually significant locations to meditate, occult training regimens, etc.

tulip folio
# 
<Name>

When Erlik became the Apostate Metropolis, they did not do so alone. The lifeblood and internal health of the city, its leaders, were some of the first to be corrupted. It was the Lector-Preachers that preached bleak words of private pleasure over public good and the Plutarchs who hid the signs of apostasy, sure they would be rewarded with place of renown in the coming world.

Instead, the roaches were the first to be led to the slaughter, their souls flayed from their bodies even as they spoke of the greatness before them. These souls were fashioned into spikes and knives with which to continue their abuse of the people they had sworn to serve.

<Name> is soulsteel woven so fine as to be thread and sown into Hanfu reminiscent of of an official or priest. Each thread is the life of an innocent of Erlik, cut short by the soulsteel that was once their Olgatory and Theomachracy. They give off a sense of lost innocence and the duty of those who served, unaware they had already been betrayed.

Don't yet have charms for it or even a name but finally got a backstory for her artifact armour.

grand flame
tulip folio
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Complete with some Weird Fancy Supernatural Ones that require mastery of an existing one.

next delta
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Exalted Essence having artifacts be like 3 charms is so much more manageable than 3E style charm trees for them.

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Though you can use "generic artifacts" if you don't care too much about evocations. Though I guess Alchemicals want evocations on them in particular

tulip folio
bleak hazel
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my personal house rule (barely a house rule, since it's all left up to the GM) for 3e artifacts is "every artifact has [Artifact dots] evocations max, one per Essence level, I'm not writing an entire tree", and that conveniently caps out the juice level of artifacts neatly

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although I find in practice most people tend to avoid going big into evocations unless they have picked one particular artifact out of a published book and want some particular powerful charm from it

upper stratus
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i got one player with an artifact and they get most of their evocations. the struggle for me is that my exp is budget like all normal exp goes to charms, splat xp goes to martial arts and improving abilities and such. if i played a character that wasn't a martial artist or a sorcerer i'd imagine myself interacting with evocations way more

bleak hazel
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yeah that's true

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I am a big martial arts/sorcery enjoyer so all I usually want out of my artifacts are stats and decent gap-filling

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wish there was more than one set of printed silken armour though

upper stratus
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yea i imagine it's even worse if you're both a martial artist and a sorcerer

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which makes the presence of an artifact that's all about doing martial arts and sorcery at the same time by buying its evocations insanely funny

bleak hazel
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literally 100% of my characters so far have necromancy, I really like necromancy

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Sids can't even get the good necromancy but as the ghost detective having Instant Zombie Horde and Summon Ghost is worth the two charms, I think

upper stratus
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two?

bleak hazel
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well, one charm to buy necromancy, one charm's worth of splat XP for the second spell

upper stratus
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oh right ok

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i wish they woulda done that thing with sids that they did with lunars: you can either reach 2nd circle sorcery or 2nd circle necromancy but not both

bleak hazel
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alchs also have that, yeah

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it would have been nice

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one thing Sids do have is an insanely well-rounded craft tree, so you can make your own artifacts with a bit of work

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not massive ones like solaroids, but it's like 4-5 charms total to be able to make your own set of silken armour and you also get access to good healing spells and a lot of niche handy buttons

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like the one that gives an Abyssal a creation green card and makes them no longer an enemy of fate

upper stratus
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there's a medicine one for that too. pretty fun

bleak hazel
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I still get annoyed by the general martial arts compatibility issues that make SMAs kind of tricky to mix in despite them being most of your high power charms, but the organic Sid charmset is easily the most entertaining one

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sorry Abyssals

upper stratus
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it's odd that an actual martial artist has more of a struggle mixing and matching SMAs than non-martial artists yea

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idk how i'd fix it

bleak hazel
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yeah it's a fiddly one

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you could ameliorate my problem in particular by just allowing people to buy enlightenment for non-Sid martial arts too, so you can pay the 1 charm tax to just glue things together

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this is my new eight-legged tiger style

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that seems like the kind of things Siddes should be doing

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that does leave a big armour-shaped gap because enlightenment only makes weapons compatible but that would be helped significantly if there was more than one suit of silken armour

upper stratus
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we should let me have a little armor as a treat

bleak hazel
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probably my most solid Sidereal build so far is the Live Wire style sid meleeist in heavy artifact plate

upper stratus
#

im 3 soak andy

bleak hazel
#

the issue there is that it makes SMAs not real

#

because none of them work in armour until essence 5 Prismatic

bleak hazel
#

let me make the 5 dot silken armour that counts as Medium

upper stratus
#

i've made peace with stamina soak + resistance charms

#

i do not realistically need that much charop for actual play. there's gonna be a weakness ig

bleak hazel
#

my issue is that half the party is Lunars and as such the GM has to try quite hard to hurt them

#

I an mildly concerned that if one of these big anti-lunar guys hits me once I will become salami

upper stratus
#

tbh soak is for y'know. withering. it won't kill you. if it puts you in a really bad spot your lunar oomfs can protect you

bleak hazel
#

yeah but I do actually want to be good at swords, I put all these points into swords

#

need to get some silken armour, at least then I have the option to be johnny bigsoak using this presence charm I found

upper stratus
#

that's fair

#

i'd kill for some silken armor. given the division, i probably will kill for some silken armor

bleak hazel
#

aint that the truth

#

at least we don't struggle too much with soak ourselves because Lesser Sign of Saturn exists

#

been getting some real use from that

upper stratus
#

my overwhelming is pretty nasty

#

i don't even optimize that much but it just ended up that way

#

i think it's like 4 base + 5 from VBoS capstone + 3 from lesser sign

bleak hazel
#

I do not have quite that much but 5 base + lesser sign + 3 more while aiming has meant I've never really had to worry about it

bleak hazel
#

designing an Abyssal and strongly considering Black Claw Style

#

the "I'm just a little guy" martial art

#

the only annoying thing is that I need to get the Martial art and Presence and Dodge to make it work right

#

wish it just let me use Socialize

tulip folio
#

Oh, figured a name for this artifact.

# 
Innocent Oblivion
Soulsteel Buff Jacket (4 Star)

When Erlik became the Apostate Metropolis, they did not do so alone. The lifeblood and internal health of the city, its leaders, were some of the first to be corrupted. It was the Lector-Preachers that preached bleak words of private pleasure over public good and the Plutarchs who hid the signs of apostasy, sure they would be rewarded with place of renown in the coming world.

Instead, the roaches were the first to be led to the slaughter, their souls flayed from their bodies even as they spoke of the greatness before them. These souls were fashioned into spikes and knives with which to continue their abuse of the people they had sworn to serve.

Innocent Oblivion is soulsteel woven so fine as to be thread and sown into Hanfu reminiscent of of an official or priest. Each thread is the life of an innocent of Erlik, cut short by the soulsteel that was once their Olgatory and Theomachracy. They give off a sense of lost innocence and the duty of those who served, unaware they had already been betrayed.

Passive Effect:

Souls of the Faultless
This Light Artifact Armour provides soak and hardness as if it was Heavy Artifact Armour against Necromancy and Creatures of Darkness.
bleak hazel
#

That seems like a bit much on the passive effect given the very broad wording of Creatures of Darkness, but I admit I'm working off the benchmark of the one Silken Armour set in the Sidereal book, which has no passive or auto-unlock evocation at all other than Being Silken Armour.

tulip folio
#

That's fair. Honestly, this isn't something I think that I think shouldn't really be Silken Armour, outside of the fluff.

bleak hazel
#

looking at other 4-dot armours, we have "+1 defence when doing sorcery things, stacks with twilight anima" and "+1 non-charm success on occult rolls about the Underworld"

tulip folio
#

I might adjust it to Chain Shirt and go 'look, it's Heavy Robes. You can't do Full Martial Arts in this'

#

...or buff coat? Armour types are weird

bleak hazel
#

+1def or +1 non-charm success when doing [specific thing] from [x ability] seems pretty much the standard for armour

#

as long as that specific thing isn't Stab

#

you could just keep it as Silken and say "+1 defence" instead of "+6 soak, +6 hardness"

tulip folio
#

nods
In Autobot City, Creatures of Darkness is basicly 'Gremlins and Apostates' (But not the cults they lead, generally) but that's fair. Maybe knock it down to just Medium, instead of Heavy?

bleak hazel
#

+3/+3 still seems a bit Big for the cost

#

which is nothing

tulip folio
#

Bother, as the intent was 'It's extra durable against this thing'.

bleak hazel
#

I'm looking at Unison here, the five-dot medium armour, that prices its passive buffs as "3 motes committed for +2 soak, +1 hardness"

#

and then an extra 2 motes, 1 initiative to remove the mobility penalty and add +1 evasion

tulip folio
#

Back to the drawing board, I suppose. I'd expected limiting it to just Creatures of Darkness would have been sufficient limitation in Autobot City.

#

Does the fluff seem interesting/fitting for artifact armour?

bleak hazel
#

oh yeah that's very good

#

I think the core gimmick of "becomes better against creatures of darkness" is totally fine, it's just that bumping it up a whole armour tier without the attendant drawbacks is a very big effect to get for free

#

+1 def would be totally fine, as would +3 soak or what have you

#

+1 def is armour normal, which is 2 motes to get normally, and 2 motes normally gets you a bit-more-than-2 soak, so 3 is close enough

tulip folio
#

nods
I was sorta basing it around the armour that is 'Heavy armour with none of the drawbacks' (But with a specific limitation to when that applies) from the artifact book.

bleak hazel
#

which one was that again?

tulip folio
#

...was it the artifacts book? Let me find it

bleak hazel
#

I don't see any of the existing armours with something that big

tulip folio
#

I've got like 5 books open.

bleak hazel
#

(and if it exists I want it, my Sid needs more soak)

tulip folio
#

Mela's Coil, that's it!

bleak hazel
#

ah yeah, the 5-dot heavy armour

#

yeah that's probably the strongest armour in the game

#

and also does not actually let you use martial arts with it

tulip folio
#

nods
And here I was thinking I was toning it down enough with 'Only vs Creatures of Darkness, Doesn't Protect Vs Enviromental Stuff, Doesn't give Razor Claws'. XD

bleak hazel
#

it comes with an entire extra artifact weapon in the form of the razor claws, the first evocation is a reflexive rush with a huge stack of extra damage on it and it lets you fly, Mela's Coil is very silly indeed

#

this is not unusual for 5-dots because 5-dots are explicitly the Do Not Give At Chargen tier

#

I would personally just do +3 soak

#

you are unlikely to eat too many decisive attacks from creatures of darkness that deal between 5 and 7 damage, so it will feel much the same

tulip folio
#

My concern there is that necromancy doesn't do much in the way of Withering.

#

It deals Environmental and Decisive attacks mostly

bleak hazel
#

then the default armour balancing would suggest +1 Def

#

but so far we are yet to see medium or heavy armour that counts as unarmoured for martial arts so I would generally steer clear of that on a precedent basis

#

if it existed, I would certainly be slathering..... probably all my characters in it

tulip folio
#

I mean, it's Light, not unarmoured (I made that change to make it a Buff Coat, not Silken) but...fair, I suppose.

bleak hazel
#

hang on, if it's light armour anyway, why not just make it medium armour?

#

like, I can see the shuffle, but since only you are probably using this, you can just go "I want the big armour"

#

pay the 1 mote extra attunement cost and get the big suit

tulip folio
#

Mostly because I wanted it to have a Very Situational but good bonus within that situation instead of being Always Tanky.

bleak hazel
#

well, fair enough, if it's not silken armour then bumping it up to medium is almost certainly fine

#

especially if, IIRC, you're using Parry over Evasion

#

it's the specific interaction of "I get to do martial arts without the downsides of doing martial arts" that is a bit wonky

tulip folio
#

Yeah, it was silken originally less out of 'I want to do martial arts' and more 'these are robes, I guess they're silken armour?'

bleak hazel
#

oh yeah, go wild then, totally fine as a 4-dot

coral wraith
#

Can you go without Martial Arts in this game as a combat blorbo? Everyone seems to talk about them as pretty important

bleak hazel
#

yeah totally

#

they're just a large number of the available combat trees and many of them are Extremely Cool

tulip folio
#

Ironically: The marital arts she does have work just fine in armour. XD

#

Thousand Blades and Reaper do not give a shit. XD

bleak hazel
#

if you want to be best at swording be a Solar, take 10 solar melee charms and you're immediately promoted to Saitama

#

it's not a power thing, it's a juice thing

tulip folio
#

I think part of it is that martial arts give you some Special Spice.

#

Every Solar Stabs The Same.

bleak hazel
#

they're very sexy

#

even for the lower-power exalts like Deebs, Deeb Melee is a very well-rounded combat tree compared to most martial arts and the same goes for Thrown/Brawl/Archery

#

it just doesn't let you do any of the weird bullshit

#

(well, deeb archery lets you turn your bow into a tree, for deebs they get some elemental juice mixed in, but you can't turn yourself into a gazellecarp)

#

personally, I am a huge martial arts fiend and I make a lot of Sidereals, who have the explicit hat of "we are the best at martial arts, we don't have to pay the normal martial arts initiation tax and our martial arts are extra cool"

#

so I talk about them a lot

tulip folio
#

And I'm playing an Alchemical who have their own relationship with marital arts.

#

In that Alchemicals are built via Battletech Mech Weapon Slots.

bleak hazel
#

even there, I use Sid Melee or Sid Brawl to back up most of my martial arts setups, and then complain about compatibility rules making it hard for me to use two different martial arts with my melee tree

tulip folio
#

And thus you can Run Out Of Room For Normal Charms

#

But being a cool martial artist won't cost you extra charm slots.

bleak hazel
#

that's always been a strange local optimum for alchemicals

tulip folio
#

It's also amusing that they like martial arts so much when they're...not honestly great with them.

#

Unlike Most Exalt Types, they can't get Mastery.

#

Though they do avoid Terrestial messing them up.

bleak hazel
#

the only people who can get Mastery are Getimians, Sidereals and the Solar types

#

they're pretty solid with them honestly

#

maybe even better than solid, because they're attribute based

tulip folio
#

Yes but once you add 'the solar types', that puts 'People with mastery' in the majority becuase there's So Many Solar Types 😛

bleak hazel
#

they're at least as good as Lunars and possibly a bit better because they seem to hit harder and don't rely as much on shapeshifting, which locks out martial arts when in animal forms

dense verge
#

yeah, the solars, who are three exalt types

bleak hazel
#

yeah, but there are only 300 solars, and nobody likes half of them because they're poorly written sun boys, so realistically you're only worrying about like 250 people + the getimians

#

who aren't real

tulip folio
# 
People with Mastery: Solars, Infernals, Abyssals, Getimians, Sidereals
People with Terrestrial: Dragonblooded
People with Neither Terrestrial Nor Mastery: Lunars, Alchemicals

People Who It Depends What Your GM Says For Your OC: Exigents
bleak hazel
#

pretty sure that Alchs are like Lunars in that if they stand in front of a Sid and press every kill button they have then the Sid wishes he avoidance kataed last round

coral wraith
#

neat

bleak hazel
#

they make up for the lack of sneaky stuff and outright bullshit with rather more raw power

coral wraith
bleak hazel
#

kinda shoddy attempt at making opposite day sidereals

tulip folio
# coral wraith neat

To go back to the original point: Martial arts are weird and let you do weird cool things. Most melee/brawl trees let you melee and brawl well but tend to do so in a bit of a generic way.

#

So martial arts tend to get more talk

bleak hazel
#

yeah

coral wraith
tulip folio
#

Like you are not doing any Black Claw Bullshit with a normal melee tree

bleak hazel
#

I have an Abyssal socialite character who has taken a bunch of martial arts moves from White Veil, which doesn't exist but if it did it would be the killing-people-at-parties martial art

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

Abyssal Melee does not let me stab a guy in full view of the entire room, give him magical super chronic fatigue syndrome and walk away whistling without anyone noticing

tulip folio
#

Black Claw, the 'Crying While Beating You Down' martial art

bleak hazel
#

but it will also turn me into soup because if I'm not doing my one trick I have like two and a half combat charms

#

I was strongly considering Black Claw

#

it's delightfully vicious

#

but it took too many dots that weren't my whole deal

tulip folio
#

Black Claw's capstone is literally reaching into your chest and pulling out your heart to crush it.

#

Black Claw doesn't believe in subtle metaphor

#

For Briar's benefit

#

It does more damage the more the person likes you.

image.png
chilly sluice
#

I love Black Claw Style

#

it's so good

bleak hazel
#

if it didn't need a ton of Presence to work I'd have it on my Abyssal

chilly sluice
#

the gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss martial art

bleak hazel
#

it's quite strong if you lean into it, too

#

you can make sad cat eyes at your attacker and slap them with a -6 penalty

chilly sluice
#

being able to attack someone in plain view, then make everyone think they started it
beat them up, and tear out their heart
and all your onlookers clap for you to heroically defy your attacker

tulip folio
#

Meanwhile Ebon Shadow is sitting in the dark corner going 'nin nin nin' as it prepares an ambush.

chilly sluice
#

the charm for disarming and stealing people's weapon is also hilarious

#

my artifact now

bleak hazel
#

I strongly considered White Veil + Ebon Shadow but there's only one charm in ES that really helps the weird social stealth that White Veil does

#

it does really slap though, if you have both you can hit someone with Blinded By Laughter for 10 automatic decisive damage + 12 more dice

#

which for most people is "you are now soup"

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

it also lasts until you put your new sword away

#

"mine"

#

"Solar Girlboss, we're at the party, put the daiklaive away"
"mine"

tulip folio
#

Correct Responce: "How dare you ask me to put it away, this is my Comfort Daiklaive, you monster!" Rolls Join Battle

bleak hazel
#

one thing I do kind of like is that of all the charms in Black Claw, Table-Turning Reversal is the one that deebs like the most

#

no mastery, no terrestrial

#

everything else is lower-power for them but they will steal your sword

tulip folio
#

I do also love the plot hook that is constantly hovering over your head as a Black Claw master.

#

This martial art is super effective against people who care about you...and every single black claw person has an unbreakable love of their master.

#

Like, they might not betray you but...they are someone who's mastered the Betray People Like A Girlboss martial art...

#

So can you really risk it?

bleak hazel
#

you can also learn it directly from Mara

tulip folio
#

This will never go badly

#

😛

bleak hazel
#

learn your martial arts from the character with 15 die double 8s seduce rolls, it'll go well, honest

#

still funny to me that she has her three Evil Intimacies and then one more that's just "I'm Enchantress from DOTA, sproink"

tulip folio
#

'A mortal is offering tasty grass' tags her intimacies

bleak hazel
#

as a demon, she doesn't have excellencies and has Resolve 4

#

that might work

#

mortal 2/2 charisma/socialise dice pool, stunt, nailed it

tulip folio
#

It would be so damn funny to get away from mara with that as a distraction.

#

Though I think she'd likely make use of 'I take pleasure in death and suffering' to counter it going 'Okay, now I'm offended. You die'

wise ocean
#

personally, I think learning Black Claw Style from Mara would be very funny and I am tempted to do it now

tulip folio
#

Silly Martial Artist Concept:

Black Claw + Thousand Blades Master. The Thousand Blade's chosen form weapon 'Other People's Weapons'.

bleak hazel
#

no deebs were harmed in the making of this kung fu movie

dense verge
#

i think it would be funny for harm to happen

wise ocean
#

I would like to roll bureaucracy to the demon

bleak hazel
#

there's a Sidereal charm that lets you stick a demon in your soul for extra buffs, it's basically a Sid version of Pact With Mara

#

and I've always thought it would be funny to pick a demon that has the opposite goals to Mara, keep mashing the "demon X gets to impose an intimacy on me" buttons in exchange for power and watch them wrestle back and forth

tulip folio
#

Ah, the John Constantine Special.

wise ocean
#

What happens if they decide to team up and eat your soul then dip

wise ocean
bleak hazel
tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

(this is possibly my favourite Sid charm)

tulip folio
#

This might have been the inspiration for that artifact armour.

bleak hazel
#

He would like to feel things he doesn’t feel, and to act in ways he doesn’t act. Why doesn’t he? Not clear! There’s room to wonder, which is how you know he’s alive. - Sid Integrity, all the time

bleak hazel
#

in the end I settled on White Veil because I'm a big crafter and this way I get to make one super mega artifact

tulip folio
#

Got to just brainstorm Evocations based around 'Innocence' + 'Death'. Honestly, I might go with more Social than Directly Combat-y evocations, play into it being robes before it's armour. XD

#

Where do evocations fall, relative to other charms? Dragonblooded-level?

bleak hazel
#

Floating nebulously in the air because the published artifacts are not consistent, really

#

I would generally say that they're a bit weaker than equivalent Celestial charms but you get to tailor them to do specific things, and then that would get blown out of the air by Mela's Coil or the Heaven and Earth Gauntlets, which are 5 and 3 dot respectively so it's not like that's standardised

#

deeb level is of course the safe bet

#

If your campaign is only one kind of exalt, I'd just write for that juice level, they cost the same as your charms

#

just watch out for stuff that stacks with existing charms

tulip folio
#

Fair. I'm not going to be outright taking them but currently looking through the Abyssal Charmset for inspiration on Sorts of Effects.

bleak hazel
#

I find a safe bet is to balance the effect off a celestial charm, add a twist and then boost the mote cost a bit

tulip folio
#

...I might steal an effect from one of the abyssal charms.

#

The one that lets you do Social Stuff to Mindless Undead.

#

Plays well with 'innocence + death' to be able to go 'I don't want to fight' and have a zombie go 'Okay' and wander off.

#

But not give it the 'every corpse I poke wakes up as a zombie' part.

bleak hazel
#

That's usually the Murder Caste's anima power in other books, not sure if any of the beep boops have it

#

a fine pick for a charm, certainly

#

Abyssals have it there and in a threats-only form in the Day Anima, for instance

tulip folio
#

Yeah, looking at Barrow-King's Authority. Presence 3, Essence 1 for Abyssals and basicly doing a 'twist' on that that's less 'I am your boss' and more 'I can evoke sympathy in the dead'

# 
Gentle Corpse Mein
Mins: Essence 1
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prereqs: None

The wearer of Innocent Oblivion's social influence is capable of affecting mindless undead. Essence 1 Mindless undead count as having a Major tie of Sympathy to her.
#

A worse charm mostly but it's an Evocation, not an Exalt's Charm.

bleak hazel
#

I would maybe bump it down to a Minor, because Abyssals are the big zombosses, but it's probably not going to matter much for zombies, which are not known for massive Resolve anyway so whatever

#

no idea if gremlins have anything autobot specific in that department

tulip folio
#

They mostly have Zombies But They Look Like The Borg when they turn up en-mass 😛

bleak hazel
#

Oh yeah, no problem then

tulip folio
#

Oh and somtimes they have Ghosts In Your Machine.

#

Aka: Warghosts in more techie-looking armour

#

Apostates are basicly the Abyssal to the Alchemical Solar. 😛

#

They're mostly the same thing but gothier and dead-er

bleak hazel
#

Major tie on anything that's a bigger deal than zambies is potentially a bit good but zombies themselves are a) fodder and b) tend to be under Defining Loyalty summon contracts, so being able to talk wild zombies into fighting for you sounds kinda fun actually

tulip folio
#

Yeah. My Alch's general 'thing' is she's a necromancer but more in the 'attempting to give peace to the dead' way than a "MURDER THE LIVING, MY MINIONS!' way 😛

bleak hazel
#

Something I find mildly entertaining is that the Abyssal charmset can never decide how hard it is to make zombies

tulip folio
#

I did notice there is an entire 'If you kill a guy while using this specific charm, you can make him a zombie' but there's also Barrow King going 'Poke, 1 mote, gottem'

bleak hazel
#

Basic Necromancy summons dozens at once, war turns every dead guy after a battle into zombies at E2, an anima power makes one for one mote....and then there's Abyssal Medicine, which spends 5m and an hour on one zombie, or 10m 1wp on a zombie with +1d to attacks

#

the capstone of medicine is a second, very slightly larger zombie

#

someone needs to tell Abyssal Frankenstein that Shadow Circle Necromancy already has warstrider sized zombie golems and he should think bigger

tulip folio
#

...I feel like the anima power should be better than 1 for 1 mote

#

When Abyssal Presence is doing that at E1

bleak hazel
#

Meh, free zombies

#

not needing a charm is nice enough sometimes, especially if Abyssal Craftgar is here wanting to build something called a Thousand Corpse Goliath that can wrestle warstriders if and only if you find literally a thousand zombies

tulip folio
#

I have noticed there's a lot of 'make zombies' charms. XD

#

Jannisary-Wraith Conscription at least goes 'Look, have War-Ghosts and Hungry Ghosts too'.

bleak hazel
#

I'm considering trying to finagle a War fav on this abyssal just for that, a zombie army with officers would help me police my empire of shadowland trading posts

tulip folio
#

I do like how Abyssal Disguise is no longer instantly shattered by 'I spent willpower'.

#

2e Abyssal Disguise hurt. Like the concept of face stealing was cool

#

But it didn't have the basic functionality side down'

#

And anti-disguise charms had a lot more meat to them than disguise charms

#

Do you think non-combat evocations is too silly? As I think I've honestly got more ideas for non-combat tricks on this gear's theming than combat tricks.

#

Also: Seriously, does no Sidereal Martial Art allow armour?

#

Like none of them even allow Light Armour

#

Do Armoured Sids just have to accept they won't get to do the Cool Sid Thing in any capacity?

#

Also: It's not good but I found a very funny marital arts + alch charms combo.

#

Birdsong Over Blades + Transpatial Cannonade Delivery

#

Birdsong lets you Not Make The Attack but still trigger on-hit effects that don't directly improve damage.

#

Transpatial Cannonade Delivery gives you the on-hit effect of 'He explodes like Torodial Shockwave Catalyst'

#

'I don't know what happened, just Just Kinda Did That'

#

Alchs also have 'can deliver unarmed attacks at range'

#

So you can just Make People Randomly Explode, Which You Had Nothing To Do With

#

They're not hurt by it but...everyone else is affected.

tulip folio
#

...huh, I wonder if Laughing Monster Style implies that Fae can get Mastery on martial arts.

#

As it's a style invented by the Fae and it's got quite a bit of Mastery in the charms.

raw edge
#

Sidereals has a side-bar that says some spirits can get Mastery and the "some spirits may have greater access [than expected] to styles that resonate with their nature". So I'd say the fae warrior-saints who invented it should get Mastery -- or at least the most skilled members of their court

bleak hazel
#

The only way to get armour and do SMAs is the Essence 5 Prismatic super form which most players will not get to mess with

upper stratus
#

it's odd like. they want to mechanically reinforce the 'martial arts master in cool robes' stereotype but like that's already accomplished by the fact that many native charms already get a lil bonus if you're unarmored. there's a lot of martial arts i'd give free access to light or even medium armor

bleak hazel
#

Light especially should probably be more common because it means you don't need to have every Sidereal on the planet commissioning 4 dot artifact trousers

upper stratus
#

it's not like they get a particularly large motepool to do all that attuning with either

bleak hazel
#

Strangely they have a way smaller mote pool than Lunars at E1 and then it steadily equalises out as both of them level

#

not sure what's going on with that

upper stratus
#

yea they scale funny

bleak hazel
#

Old Sids get the good stuff, prophecy starts getting really scary at Essence 4 too

upper stratus
#

isn't there a hearthstone that helps with this kinda stuff

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

There's one to commit one mote for 2 soak and a Greater Rock to reduce an armour by one tier, but the latter isn't very useful for tanking up because that still only lets you make Light Armour work with most MAs and you could already do that

upper stratus
#

right

#

oh yea lol and you still count as armored for other purposes

image.png
bleak hazel
#

Mastery is just the Good At This keyword, it's not any kind of marker of perfect Solar brilliance etc. etc.

bleak hazel
#

after about two hours of number crunching, spreadsheeting and test dice rolls I think I now understand the craft system well enough to play a craft abyssal

#

for the slightly steep cost of 9 charms and 10 ability dots you too can assemble 5 dot manses

#

this is actually kind of a fun system once you're used to it but the fact it requires me to build an future cash flow model just to understand what the hell these charms actually let me do is extremely annoying

#

I feel I should write a quick guide to this if the character works well because it would be really handy to just have "want to do 3/5/whatever-dot artifacts? take these charms"

tulip folio
#

It's one part of the system I'm still just entirely bouncing off.

bleak hazel
#

I need some more experience with it in actual play to understand how important the XP is, but I think I have the maths pretty locked down by now

#

there's this quirk where you get a refund on some of your craft-brain-juice-stuff for completing an artifact project ahead of schedule

#

and if you're Solar or Abyssal level good at crafting you can actually complete the projects so ahead of schedule that certain artifacts refund you more craft juice than you spent to make them, because the longer a project takes the more you spend anyway

#

I'm not entirely sure that a max rank craft solar can't just spin up by making a few spoons and wooden spears and then immediately go infinite on legendary daiklaives

bleak escarp
#

Look for a rework.

bleak hazel
#

at its best, it's extremely jank

bleak escarp
#

... Okay that's unfair. Craft works in 3e, it succeeds at what it wants to be, just, what it wants to be is a cookie clicker minigame, and I think that is not merely ass, but a fundamentally wrong-headed way to implement a craft system into any RPG.

lunar magnet
bleak hazel
#

there seems to be this expectation that someone who wants to do crafting should be willing to go 12 charms deep into craft at chargen and resolutely use crafting to solve every problem to keep the craft train rolling

lunar magnet
#

There we go, that's how the crafting system works.

bleak hazel
#

the main issue there is that to get different craft types you need to put 5 entire dots into a skill, so you are actively discouraged from becoming Solar Tony Stark the polymath

bleak escarp
#

Which is dumb, to be clear, a bunch of the heroic inspirations for exalted crafters were basically polymaths.

bleak hazel
#

"craft is one skill, different crafts are specialties" is like the most common craft homebrew rule even for groups that don't rip the whole thing out and start over

bleak escarp
#

Yep

bleak hazel
#

I am currently playing an Abyssal strongly inspired by Sauron and if we weren't starting at E3 I would by no means have the ability to do craft properly as presented in vanilla

#

Abyssal Craft is better than Solar Craft, but it still takes so many god damn charms to get powered up that I haven't even started on the fun cursed objects tree yet

#

Sid Craft is actually great and somehow manages to make the cookie clicker system work well by the simple expedient of handing you enough craft juice to make normal stuff and a few artifacts in the course of doing normal Sidereal things

#

and then at high essence just giving you a button to skip the thing

bleak escarp
#

Yeah, later exalted do better with it because the new devs have had more time to work out how to take a hatchet to the system.

#

Personally, my perspective is that Exalted craft's greatest sin is that it's a massive decker problem because it puts the process of assembling things front-and-centre as a mechanically significant (and therefore time-consuming) element of the session.

#

I actually think 2e's system was better.

#

It wasn't good, to be clear.

#

But because it let the crafter hole up in a tower for a month, it could shunting them offscreen where their rolls weren't taking up everybody's time.

bleak hazel
#

I have found that isn't a huge issue if Johnny Craft is willing to run his own spreadsheet, but that is because I do a lot of play-by-post, and that makes it way easier because me going away to plan out my manse is not holding up the entire table for five minutes of everyone's actual lives

bleak escarp
#

Yeah, and unfortunately PbP Exalted invites its own issues.

bleak hazel
#

meh, I think it's a sidegrade

bleak escarp
#

(Although I'd take it for the sake of a game, at this point)

bleak hazel
#

nicely encourages the party to split up and then you can have lots of fun skirmishes and bit encounters

#

combat takes a bit, though

bleak escarp
#

But my own preferred inspiration for Exalted crafting is basically the coffee machine skit from girl genius.

bleak hazel
#

currently planning a Deeb game and I'm tempted to try to get everyone to show up in VC to do the fights live, then do PBP for the rest, because I think that would be a very clean mix

bleak escarp
#

Hnn, yeah that'd work.

bleak hazel
#

also there are good Exalted 3rd dice rollers now and they speed things up a lot

tulip folio
bleak escarp
#

Yeah, look for a rework.

bleak hazel
#

OK, it depends strongly what kind of exalt you are

#

Solar Craftgar hates life

#

Sid Craft you're actually fine

#

I'll look at alchs in a minute when this chiv match is over

tulip folio
#

Though I suppose there's 'craft' and 'craft that involves artifacts'.

bleak hazel
#

my attitude towards the worse splat's crafting is very similar to my attitude towards 2e in general

tulip folio
#

In my character's case I was looking at her being...well, an artist who can make nice art, alongside her various social things.

bleak hazel
#

if you go through the trouble of understanding all the foibles, keeping your feet away from the gaping holes and homebrewing your own structure to duct tape it all together, it works well enough and can be a good time

tulip folio
#

But it does sorta seem like 99% of craft charms are 'So, About Them Artifacts'

bleak hazel
#

but if the damn system sucked less to begin with I wouldn't have needed to spend three hours doing that for the craft subsystem

#

Sid Craft on the other hand is genuinely a lovely time and I enjoyed playing Sid Detective: Also A Potter

#

I made little artifact gargoyles out of clay to follow my suspects

bleak escarp
# bleak escarp But my own preferred inspiration for Exalted crafting is basically the coffee ma...

GG is actually interestingly good inspiration for Exalted. Obviously the aesthetic is all wrong, but hits the right notes of high drama/intrigue driven by people possessed of exaggerated passions, blessed and cursed with great personal power and influence in a world overrun with ruin and wonder. And it's interesting that even in this work that's all about mad scientists making death rays and monstrous violations against the laws of god and man, GG rarely if ever puts much focus on the act of crafting. Like, the coffee machine skit starts with some brief research, then is mostly a series of social influence engagements with the townsfolk, sourcing parts/tools/labour in exchange for a wondrous thing she can make, the actual Making A Thing content is like... 1 dramatic splash page of being ready to begin, some offscreen explosions and bystander reactions, and another splash of the finished product. Because GG understands that the process of assembling/constructing a thing is not actually mechanically engaging - it can be a spectacle, in a visual medium, like watching a blacksmith quench a sword in oil so it comes out on fucking fire, but in a text medium that's like, stunt text for one roll, y'know?

bleak hazel
#

give me a sec to consult Alch Craft but I may have a proposal

#

do you have a preferred type of art?

#

doesn't matter very much

tulip folio
#

I was thinking painting but I'm not set in it

bleak hazel
#

so you know how when you hit second circle whatever you get another shaping ritual?

#

necromantic paintings go

#

(I would genuinely just say every craft is appropriate here, it's not like the mechanics differ)

tulip folio
#

That's fun

bleak hazel
#

I would suggest getting enough craft juice to make a couple of very basic artifacts

#

do you have Lore 3?

tulip folio
#

Yep!

#

Lore 3, Occult 3

bleak hazel
#

hang on I just got attribute exalted

#

I thought Int was their whole craft tree and had looked at it a lot before but there's a bunch of other stuff, wait one

tulip folio
#

Yeah, there's some in Wits too

#

And actually a hair in Stamina

bleak hazel
#

never mind, Wits is where all the bullshit nobody cares about lives, ignore that

#

I wondered where all the craft XP charms that bloat every tree other than Sids went

#

luckily they went mostly into submodules so there's only a couple

#

you're Robot Bigbrain, right?

#

lots of int

tulip folio
#

Yep

#

Int/Cha/Str/<Either Dex or App, Still Deciding>

bleak hazel
#

how high is that int

#

and how many charm slots would you be willing to dedicate to crafting because that's actually a big deal for alchs

#

two?

tulip folio
tulip folio
# bleak hazel two?

And honestly, 2-3 as I doubt I'll have them in my 'walking about' charmset.

bleak hazel
#

oh yeah you can swap

tulip folio
#

So I'll likely have 'Charmset when I plan to do combat' and 'Charmset when I want more utility but only basic combat'

bleak hazel
#

yeah you can do a decent craft suite with this, I just want to see if Alchs have the ability to cheaply make 3 dot artifacts because it would be nice if you could make some cool swords for team

#

mundane projects + the odd artifact every now and then is actually quite well supported by the craft system as long as you ignore every single charm that ever talks about Craft XP or Legendary Projects

tulip folio
#

Hahahah, fair.

bleak hazel
#

Transpuissant Whatever doesn't increase your excellency limit, right?

#

wait of course it doesn't, dice from it are considered charm

#

OK, cool

#

with this charm and all the submodules apart from the Essence 3 one I cropped out, you can fairly easily bash out a 3 dot artifact in 5 or 6 rolls or a 2 dot in 3

#

use God-Forge Upgrade, make yourself some Exceptional tools as a major project, stunt and spend willpower every time you roll to finish one

#

hang on you can maybe skip another module let me cronch numbers

#

want to get that XP cost down, call that just-in-time production

tulip folio
#

nods

#

That's pretty simple, relatively speaking

bleak hazel
#

you will not have enough gold juice to do this very often

#

but if you're doing a lot of tinkering around with mundane craft you can probably do a couple of fun swords

tulip folio
#

nods

#

So make art, use art to make other cool things

bleak hazel
#

that is the intended progression for the craft system, buried deep under many layers of cruft

#

OK, after fiddling with the craft-o-matic for a bit to get it to mimic alchemical stats instead of solar ones, if you only buy the first two submodules you have about a 90% chance of finishing a 3 dot

tulip folio
#

Click the cookie, use cookies to buy a granny.

bleak hazel
#

stunt a bit harder to round that up nicely

#

if you do buy the double 8s submodule it goes up to 99%

#

the only annoying thing is that this needs Craft (Arti) 5 and Craft (Normal) 5 and I can't find the traditonal charm that clones your craft ratings so you can get Craft (Artifacts) for 8xp

#

whoops I crashed the craft-o-matic

#

I don't think it likes being an alchemical

#

fixed now

tulip folio
#

...I will say, it does feel a bit weird that so little of the Craft Trees in exalted are about doing things with crafting.

#

Like, they're about bigger numbers and bigger craft objects

#

But not a lot of like 'Get a big social boost for providing the perfect gift'

bleak hazel
#

this is why I like Sid Craft so much, and the bits of Abyssal craft that aren't Solar mirrors

#

Sid Craft has tons of weird and wonderful stuff because they weave fate

tulip folio
#

I hope I'm remotely coherant in that grumble btw?

bleak hazel
#

Abyssal craft has a sauron tree to let you present cursed objects to people and charm them and fuck with them

#

yeah, it's my no 1 grumble too

#

although in my case it's more "why do I have to build a discounted cash flow model to understand what charms to buy to make certain artifacts, this is stupid"

#

OK, very funny thing

#

you might want to buy two sets of Imprinted Data Cluster, leave them at base and swap them in when you want to do big crafting

tulip folio
#

oh?

bleak hazel
#

if you have multiple installations of a charm, do you have to buy the submodules for each of them?

#

wait, the second submodule on this says "you only need it once for all purchases of this charm" so I would assume that normally you do

#

never mind, this whole rigmarole would only save you 1xp

#

looks like the best bet is to take Optimised Design Algorithm, the first two submodules and manually buy your way up to Craft 5, Craft (Artifacts) 5

#

which kinda sucks

#

why do alchs have a worse craft dot cloning service than every other splat, they're robots

dense verge
#

you are stronger than i for trying to look at craft

bleak hazel
#

I enjoyed Sid Craft enough to try my hand at Abyssal Craft

#

which may be unpleasant

#

but I think my spreadsheet powers are strong enough, I actually enjoy this bit

#

why are these guys so bad at crafting

#

they can do a lot if they go all in but a lot of their basic charmtech is kinda shoddy and you need a lot of XP spent

#

so your options are:

a) take some dots in a mundane craft, use it to do basic and major projects + make necromantic effigies
b) take Craft 5, Craft (Arti) 5 and two craft charms, at which point you can do 2 and 3 dot artifacts whenever you bank up enough gold juice

#

you want Optimized Design Algorithms and two or three submodules, plus Incomparable Efficiency Upgrade and its first submodule to bash out artifacts in a few weeks

#

ODA's third sub + Cognitive Architecture Expansion + Creator Recalibration circuits for more XP gets you to an 80% chance of 4-dot if you want to go a little further, and massively increases the speed you can make artifacts, but that feels like more investment than you want here

#

anyway, to cleanse our palates after this annoying craft tree, I present Sid Craft

#

great out of combat healing spell, great social charm ("no fighting, we are looking at the wall hanging"), Fit Check

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

the ability to duct tape together Legendary manses in one work shift as long as fae fucked them up is kind of a fun niche part of that Essence 1 sid craft charm

#

you need to be good at craft to roll that repair properly but I could see some fun wyld adventures there

tulip folio
#

...I know it was a really minor martial art in 2e but man I'd love to see a return of First Pulse in 3e. Introduction to the Stone Prince was a very funny charm.

#

Also: It was very funny having my Sid go 'Of course I'm ready to learn Sidereal Martial Arts, I have learned the secret martial art of being a ratfuck streetfighting cheat'

bleak hazel
#

there's a Sid Companion coming out at some point but I believe it doesn't have that one

#

but it does have Even Blade

tulip folio
#

Even Blade was fun.

bleak hazel
#

Sid Companion has no extra charms in, which I find kind of odd, only a ton of martial arts

#

which is the Sid thing, sure, but everyone else also gets those

tulip folio
#

But yeah, First Pulse is one of those ones I don't expect to turn up again as it was like the most terrestrial of terrestrial martial arts.

#

Being 'The art of beating a guy with a tire iron when he turns his back in a street alley'

#

And I imagine asking the devs they'd just say 'Take Brawl Charms'

tulip folio
#

Stuff like 'Oh yeah, expand the weapon options for this martial art' or 'Yeah, you can use that in 1 degree heavier armour'

#

Stuff that makes the jigsaw pieces fit together more neatly.

#

If that remotely makes sense?

bleak hazel
#

yeah, that would be my preference

#

just like one page of charms to smooth out the one remaining Sidereal rough patch

tulip folio
#

As I feel like...well, there's a lot of weapons that are mechanically very similar but if you make them your Sid's thing, you're kinda screwed.

#

How is the Kama different from a Short Sword? Basicly entirely just in the fact it has less martial arts it can use.

#

And telling the Hungry Ghost User that he can also learn Steel Devil wouldn't exactly break the game, as best I can tell.

bleak hazel
#

honestly the thing I want more is armour, but yeah

#

you could actually sort all the weapon compatibility with a one word errata removing the word "sidereal" from the Enlightenment charms

#

although that would mean you'd need a mainline combat tree to reach them

tulip folio
#

I also feel like you could even let other exalts have a much more limited version of it. Where you can go 'Pick a style and pick a weapon your GM agrees is similar to the compatible weapons, that's now also a form weapon'. Letting people go 'Yes, I can do this with Daiklaives and Reaper Daiklaives because they're bloody similar weapons and I'm good at this shit'.

#

Or the Kama/Short Sword example

spring lynx
#

wait, do you not get to use Any One-Handed Sword if a style has swords as favoured?

#

that's dumb

tulip folio
#

Single Point? Reaper Daiklaives Only.

#

Fire Dragon? Short Dailklaives only.

#

Steel Devil? Any one handed sword

spring lynx
#

ok see i thought you were complaining about this from the other direction

#

if it specifies a type of sword i understand the restriction

#

i thought you were talking about something that just says 'sword'

tulip folio
#

Nah, talking about how despite 3e sorta boiling weapons down to mostly 'light/medium/heavy' (With some extra small keywords), some weapons get a lot more access to martial arts than others.

#

Like if you're a Reaper user, you're honestly better off using a staff than a Scythe

#

As the staff has other martial arts it works with.

#

While the scythe does not

spring lynx
#

scythe's cooler tho

tulip folio
#

Yeah but it's not great that you're incentivised to not take the iconic weapon.

bleak escarp
tulip folio
#

(Then again, I'm pretty terrible at evaluating martial art styles so I've no clue if that style is actually good at Being A Jiangshi or not)

bleak escarp
#

I cannot give any details, but I will say there is another scythe style in the works and it seems very cool.

bleak hazel
#

Scarlet Patterned Battlefield is back?

#

Personally I'm very hyped for the flying guillotine style that was in the Sid backer awards because that was an extremely silly king fu movie

tulip folio
#

But isn't 'scythe style' details? 😛

#

But more seriously: Not going to press for details

bleak hazel
#

Ah, no, Kickstarter calls it Crimson Killing Field so that would presumably not be the old SMA that let you bind an army to their boss,kill the boss and watch everyone else fall over

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

shame, that one had a badass sutra

#

I kind of wish there were more Sidereal charms in it rather than a big pile of stuff every exalt can use

bleak hazel
bleak hazel
tulip folio
#

Being able to Turn On/Off Hideous is pretty cool.

bleak hazel
#

currently engaging in the traditional Exalted activity of "man, I wish I had four more charms"

#

when I have four more charms I will still be wishing I had four more charms

bleak hazel
#

@tulip folio Hundred Shade Breath is the big battlegroup shadow circle spell, so Alchs can just learn that one and get your ghostly legion that way

tulip folio
#

Oh, whoops.

#

Yes, I want that one.

#

My character already looks like an Alchemical Hungry Ghost.

#

As she wears what is basicly a Qing Dynasty Bureaucrat outfit day to day.

#

Which I think makes her 'the most covered exalted character who isn't called First and Forsaken Lion' 😛

bleak hazel
#

my Abyssal is starting out with the "your blood counts double for magic and your wound penalty is 1 bigger whenever it would benefit you" necromancy merit, plus the shaping ritual that lets you spend your blood as spell fuel

#

which means he can stand up, slash his own palm with a big evil knife and do just enough damage to himself to hit -1 wound penalty, at which point his huge horde of ghosts deploys at max possible size (3)

#

hopefully that will not be required very often because it impedes my ability to stand in the back and throw more spells for the rest of the fight, but it's neat

#

his blood is also literally blue so I'm not sure how this stuff works

#

The necromancer’s blood possesses an uncanny blue tint when spilled, tendrils writhing beneath its surface

#

man has stranger-looking blood than the actual robot

tulip folio
#

Alchs: "I'm not 100% sure my blood wasn't already blue nanomachines."

#

Nice. I've got Mathemagic as my sorcery ritual and <Honestly Not Sure> for a Necromancy Ritual. I keep bouncing about the necromantic rituals and not being 100% sure which one would be most fun.

#

Death in Effigy looks potent but I'll admit it feels like it's got the least plot hooks built into it. XD

#

While 'turning up coated in blood' or 'Becoming the lead singer of nightwish' looks a bit funnier.

bleak hazel
#

death in effigy is my go-to because I love wandering around with my arsenal of Dishonored bone charms

tulip folio
#

100% fair

bleak hazel
#

especially on my Sidereal

tulip folio
#

I think part of it is that for Alchs the charms would be a bit mundane and unlikely to cause trouble.

#

As Autobot city already makes things from Human Bones 😛

#

While the others are more likely to Cause Me Issues

#

If that makes sense?

bleak hazel
#

it's also a great excuse to do a lot of basic and major crafting - whenever I'm in a safehouse or a base or a new area I make a quick major effigy and hide it under a floorboard, and I whittle a quick basic one before bed and add it to the bandolier

#

suddenly, solid craft point income

#

it doesn't actually specify whether you can have multiple but you can only draw from them 1/scene unless it's for your control roll so I don't see why not

tulip folio
#

That makes a lot of sense

#

Gives you an in-universe reason to be constantly playing crafy-clicker

bleak hazel
#

my Sidereal weaves prayer strips and winds them around little bone sticks, my Abyssal folds metal into the relevant shapes with Craft (Metalworking) because he has so many craft charms he doesn't actually need tools

fierce star
#

hello I'm being bullied by someone to put a design ponder in here: Why do several martial arts that were Terrestrial MAs back in ex2 have, well, Terrestrial effects in ex3? White Veil Style (if it existed, of course), Golden Jannisary, Swaying Grass Dance... I can kinda get them having mastery (since a lot of 2e styles were just 'Terrestrial Style, But Celestial', example being golden exhalation into righteous devil) to not have to double up on styles, but it seems weird for traditionally terrestrial styles to be worse for terrestrial exalted?

bleak hazel
#

as far as I'm aware the keywords are almost literally "martial arts, grade small (terrestrial), medium (neutral) and large (mastery)"

#

so it's less a specific lore commentary on anything and more just calibrating power for different Exalt tiers without having to write three different Arts

fierce star
#

Mm, I suppose that's fair. And in a vacuum not taking previous editions into consideration it makes sense if you want that split to exist. It's just odd coming from previous editions, I suppose. (Then again I also have some issues with ex3 MAs in general, and how they kinda removed them as a path of enlightenment and instead just made them Alternate Combat Charms unless you're a sidereal, but that's beyond the scope of simple design/lore interaction questions)

bleak hazel
#

I would appreciate a generic Enlightened Mortal sidebar in a book somewhere, yes

#

the mortal martial artists who can throw energy snakes or cut someone with a golden karate chop are always kind of neat

tulip folio
#

...you know, you could likely do up 'You martial arted so hard you enlightened your essence' as an Exigent type.

bleak hazel
#

Exigents are way more juiced than your average enlightened mortal

fierce star
#

Mortals who aren't sorcerers being able to like. Actually Do Things is something I miss from ex2. (Even if those things were rarely much, it was still something.)

bleak hazel
#

those guys have like 10-15 motes and two charms

#

then you get four Old Masters who all have 15 motes and two charms and suddenly your starting deeb might be in a tight spot

#

I was tempted to homebrew some kind of "Shape Punching Motes" action for mortal martial artists where they sit down, meditate for an hour and gain, I don't know, Willpower x2 motes to spend on martial arts charms that last until spent or refreshed

tulip folio
#

Giving them what is basicly a Shaping Ritual But For Martial Arts would be fun

bleak hazel
#

so mortal karate kid actually can throw Striking Cobra Technique and his master can enter Snake Form

#

also all the basic stuff like "add +1 to your evasion" suddenly becomes quite big when you're a mortal and don't have excellencies

fierce star
#

of course the problem there is you can't really be taught martial arts charms in such a way, since ex3 has the whole 'charms aren't real' thing going for it. Which I believe still applies to MA charms?

#

I don't think it's stated otherwise at least

bleak hazel
#

nah, martial arts charms and sorcerous spells are actual in-universe techniques

#

so are Sidereal charms, as ever

#

it's just Solar/Lunar/Abyssal/Whatever charms that are vague categorisations of effects for rules purposes

fierce star
#

I knew spells were (and alchemical charms), didn't know that about Sidereals though. Haven't had call to play one yet so Ih aven't read most of their book.

bleak hazel
#

they are no longer hard-locked to the charms they had when their exaltations were made, at least

#

Sids can petition the maidens for new tricks

#

which is kind of fun

fierce star
#

That's neat. I know the general way around that in ex2 was just 'the charms you homebrewed already existed, it's just no one had cause to learn them in a long time', which kinda the same deal, good to see it canonized.

bleak hazel
#

Sids, a couple of minor foibles with martial arts compatibility aside, are amazing this edition

#

probably the cleanest exalt type to play

fierce star
#

... Well that's new lol

bleak hazel
#

they have most of their boring "gain +dice to X" abilities boiled into their free excellencies so all their ability trees are just the fun stuff

fierce star
#

Do they still have the trick in sid archery where they turn metaphysical concepts into arrows to shoot those concepts into people?

bleak hazel
#

Generalised Ammunition Technique is still a standby, yes

#

the E5 capstone for Sid Archery is an expansion of it that allows you to shoot things like avalanches, snowstorms and spare Lunar Exalts

fierce star
#

I played a strawberrysid back in ex2 who did that with Heroism, Magnificant Weaponry, Impenetrable Armor, Tactical Acumen, and Skill At Arms to make heroic mortals with good starting gear oin demand.

bleak hazel
#

oh that's a fun one

#

I'll have to remember that

#

Sid Craft has a similar button actually

fierce star
#

Oh?

bleak hazel
#

you embed a resplendent destiny in a perfectly mundane thing, the thing becomes vaguely artifact-y and anyone who bears it takes on the destiny

#

so you can make a fake legendary sword that produces a fake legendary hero

#

great for Technically Correct Prophecies

tulip folio
#

notes down for inspiration when I eventually get around to that Raksha for 3e I have bouncing about

bleak hazel
fierce star
#

Nice

bleak hazel
#

"Sword-Queen's Foretold Blade"

#

it's the Captain Carrot charm, basically

tulip folio
#

...do 3e sids still have that 'heaven is so rich that Just Getting By for a sid is enough to crash the creation-side economy'?

#

I had fun with a Salary 5 Sid who just Had Comical Dosh

bleak hazel
#

they still aren't quite as choppy as Solars or Lunars but now that manifests as "man, wish I could get some bigger armour without turning off all my martial arts" rather than "our paranoia combat stuff sucks so we evaporate when touched"

#

they can hold their own perfectly fine and become monstrous with prep time

fierce star
#

but yeah, Generalized Ammo Technique was always one of my favorite Sidereal charms. I had a few specific combos on that character other than the 'instant heroic mortal' one; one of my usual combat uses wa shooting 'fire' and 'inflammability', for example.

bleak hazel
#

an E4 sid that's been following you for a month is a terror

fierce star
#

I actually caused a bit of a scandal with that one by setting a lesser elemental dragon of fire on fire...

bleak hazel
#

(well, a maxed out melee solar will kill you tick 1 round 1, but they do that to everything, including entire circles of other solars because their trees are a little bit broken in favour of insane blitzing)

tulip folio
fierce star
#

Look if he didn't want to burn he should have dodged the arrow.

tulip folio
#

I do like the 3e Sid charm that is just 'Call Boss, Have Him Solve The Problem'

#

It allows you to replace any problem with a different, bigger, more dragon-y problem

bleak hazel
fierce star
#

I don't know if you remember the character iki but it was the Austrailian Surfer Dude Battlesid. You helped me with his accent.

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(His surfboard was also his powerbow)

bleak hazel
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so their salaries start at the GDPs of small countries and trend up

tulip folio
fierce star
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lmao

bleak hazel
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Avoidance Kata and Duck Fate are their old selves

fierce star
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Always good to have

bleak hazel
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I don't have them on my current sid but only because I couldn't afford Dodge

fierce star
#

is Thrown still the 'tank things' charm tree?

bleak hazel
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no, thrown is now the Black Dynamite one

tulip folio
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iirc, the charm trees now actually do the thing they're supposed to do.

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They just do them weirdly

bleak hazel
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there's a few weird points - your soak charm is in Presence, for instance

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but yeah it's a bit more normal

fierce star
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I am honestly fairly happy with that

bleak hazel
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they provide a handy sidebar

fierce star
#

I didn't mind everything being Moranesque, buuuuuut

bleak hazel
#

then you get into Sidereal Martial Arts, which aren't that much more powerful than the equivalent Celestial charms but are a lot weirder and all bets are off

tulip folio
fierce star
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I will probably end up reading Sidereals in depth more if only to use their charms/powers as contrast to my current white whale homebrew project

bleak hazel
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SMAs can still do incredible nonsense things but they do it in cool ways rather than by scrawling "power x100000" on the paper

fierce star
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that's cool!

tulip folio
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With shit like 'Look, just Have An Excellency instead of being able to ladder yourself up to dex 10 all time by assuming like 3 different kicker of asses forms' 😛

bleak hazel
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Obsidian Shards for instance has three capstones - a "normal" turn yourself into a battlegroup charm that is an almost direct port of the Solar and Lunar equivalents, a form upgrade and a collaborative writing exercise that is also the best finisher in the game

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they made Breathing On The Black Mirror good

fierce star
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Nice

bleak hazel
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you now need to roll your initiative to use it, and it only goes off if your result meets or exceeds the largest number of health levels any enemy in the scene has left, which is really cute because just making a decisive attack with that giant pool of initiative would produce the same effect if your target did nothing to defend themselves

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instead of having to batter your way through all the bullshit solar defences you can just go "look, I have been kicking your arse six ways to Calibration in this fight, this is over" and use your giant pool of initiative to punch through reality and pull out the mirror shard in which you won

fierce star
#

but yeah, I might be running a PBP with a friend group of mine soon based in Uluiru, where the basic pitch is 'what if you could bring an Incarna back to life? Should you, if you could?', so on the off chance at the campaign climax that they do decide 'yes, we can, and yes, we should' I want to have Auroral Exalted ready.

tulip folio
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You are a madman 😛

bleak hazel
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there's also a sorcery spell that lets you summon Judge Dredd, which is very funny

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not sure if this was in 2e but I love it

image.png
fierce star
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Beautiful

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also yes I am a madman, this is known

tulip folio
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...man, I entirely forgot that there was an entire second damn group of elves in Creation.

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Mountain Folk Technically Exist.

fierce star
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Weren't the rules for playing them in scroll of heroes, not graceful wicked masques?

tulip folio
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Possibly!

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I don't have my book open right now

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I just recalled that the Fae who got stuck in creation when it was formed became Mountain Folk

fierce star
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at least the ones at the pole of earth did, yeah

tulip folio
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And are honestly more Fey than the...Fae. XD

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Exalted Fae are a very Modern Fantasy Fae.

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While Mountain Folk are more Sidhe

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Being Fey Fancy Crafters of Wonder who live Underground.

spring lynx
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i thought the mountain folk were autocthon's first crack at making a species

fierce star
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The raw materials used were fae that were cuaght by the elemental pole of earth, iirc

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so... yes!

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to both accounts

tulip folio
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...I am dangerously tempted by a thing.

fierce star
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Oh?

tulip folio
# 
Mountain Folk

Mountain Folk are originally Fae, caught in the creation of the elemental pole of earth and shaped into beings by Autocthon. Mountain Folk are made the same way as Raksha, though their Defining Role is almost always their Caste (Worker, Warrior or Artisan). Unlike Raksha, creation does not cause them to calcify and thus they do not have Stagnation. Instead, exposure to the Loom of Fate causes them to make wild and barely understood connections, giving them Chaos.
bleak escarp
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they are very much of the 'technically exist' category, yes

tulip folio
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...I wonder if any Mountain Folk ended up in Autobot city. They were Primus' creations.

fierce star
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They aren't mentioned in COCDAutobot, 2e alchemicals or 3e alchemicals to my knowledge, but I could see it happening for a small number of htem.

tulip folio
# 
Awakened Dream Manufacture
Cost: 10m, 1 WP; Mins: Charisma 3, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: Mute
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None
The Raksha shapes gossamer into strings, tangling the strands of fate so that she always had what she needs at this moment.

The Raksha rolls (Charisma + [Performance, Craft or Socialize]) against difficulty 1. Success grants her one dot in one of the following Merits, stacking with additional dots: Backing, Allies, Contacts, Followers, Influence, Language, Mentor, Retainers, Resources.

Allies and Mentors created by this charm are real people linked to the Raksha with this charm, while Contacts and Retainers can be either real people linked this way or fake flesh automatons crafted by Wyld magic. However, for all purposes, these merits are entirely real and last until this charm is next used.

For each 2 additional successes, she can gain an additional dot in the chosen Merit or another merit from the list.

Reset: Once Per Story

Sidebar: Oh Come On!
The stronger story crafted by the gamemaster allows for any of these merits to be vetoed at the game master's discretion, forcing those dots to be reassigned. However, the game master should consider if allowing those merits would be actively disruptive to the game or simply create chaos for the characters. Getting a gateway lesson with your good buddy Ledaal Kes won't break the game if the focus isn't on Dynasty Politics, for example and pulling out a 'Actually, I work for you guys' card is a classic of fiction, after all.
tulip folio
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The various Umaza’s Hymns seem pretty fun, though Hymn of the Siren only lasting until end of scene seems the weakest.

tulip folio
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...where the hell do necromancy spells that send you to the Underworld/Labyrinth take you in Autobot City?

limpid badge
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Pole of Smoke

upper stratus
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oh, you know

tulip folio
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...that seems even more dangerous than going to the Labyrinth. XD

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Door of the Dead is likely not good spell for my Alch then.

tulip folio
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Hmm...Death of Obsidian Butterflies of Flesh Sloughing Wave? Actually...what is the range of Flesh Sloughing Wave?

# 
The necromancer unleashes a wave of Essence, rolling an unblockable (Perception + Occult) decisive attack against all living enemies within range, ignoring cover.
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I can't find a listed range for it.

upper stratus
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from a quick search through the discord it's an error and supposedly meant to be medium

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like a spot in medium range

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i can't really find a direct dev quote though

tulip folio
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Okay, cool. So it's a pretty big damn wave (As it's not a line like the butterflies) but it doesn't leave the dangerous terrain.

upper stratus
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yes

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and only targets the living

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which might be a real problem in autochton?

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do alchemicals count as alive

tulip folio
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They do!

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For all purposes, Alchemicals are alive.

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...but yeah, being living only is a bit limiting as Gremlins are spirits.

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I guess it's butterflies. Man for being a necromancer most of my spells are sorcery. XD

upper stratus
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spirits aren't necessarily not alive

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little counterintuitive when thinking about 'spirits' in the way it's usually used but within the context of exalted spirits is just a very broad category of weird lil freaks

tulip folio
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Oh yeah, but they're Machine Spirits so...I dunno, likely not alive?

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It's tricky

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They're machines but they're also spirits

upper stratus
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right probably not alive then

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count as automatons i reckon

tulip folio
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Like Autocthon is alive-enough to be sick and dying but I'm not sure if he'd count as 'living'.

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Then again, they're also alive enought to have children with mortals...

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Exalted can be confusing

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Oh well, Raise the Skeletal Horde and Bone Puppet Dance are decent spells, even if it's tricky to find other Ivory circle spells that super work for her due to the location.

upper stratus
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you picked a real struggle for yourself

tulip folio
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Door of the Dead: 'Hey, what afterlives can I step into?'
Autocthun: Afterlife - Inefficient. Soul Recycling in Autobot City - Actually Functions.

upper stratus
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and who made the design that ended up with that inefficient system huh

tulip folio
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Autocthun: Engaging Shame Protocols

upper stratus
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and now i have to run around pushing ghosts into lethe cause they keep disrupting the loom

tulip folio
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Blessure of Bloody Respite: 'Hey, can I step into a sanctum?'
Autocthun: Seal blocks all extradimensional travel. No sanctums within Autobot city

Necromancer: "You're not making this easy!"
Autocthun: That is, indeed, the point

upper stratus
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blessure huh

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that's just the dutch word for wound

tulip folio
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That's the name!

image.png
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You carve a wound into reality and step through it.

upper stratus
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no no it's fine. i just didn't expect necromancy to be dutch

tulip folio
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If you try to do that in Autobot City, the seal that keeps it locked away tells you to Piss Off. XD

upper stratus
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does that mean gods in autochton also don't have sanctums

tulip folio
#

There are no gods in Autocthon!

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They're Machine Spirits

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And they just Have Houses.

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Because they're in charge.

upper stratus
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oh right

tulip folio
#

Well, okay. Machine Spirits are sorta spirits and sorta demons.

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They're Autochun's souls.

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So the Divine Ministers are like Liger.

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Which is why you can summon them with Summon Demon.

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But they're immune to being bound.

upper stratus
#

right

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cause autochton didn't participate in the surrender pact

tulip folio
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Due to 'I won the war, I didn't surrender shit'

upper stratus
#

my sid knocking on the crystalline sanctum of the godhead going 'lemme in. i just wanna take a look. let me in. let me iiiiiin'

image.png
tulip folio
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Autocthon developed excellent networking protocols for the loom.

upper stratus
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me and my pattern spider saw your Loom Copy from across the seal and we want to study you like a bug

tulip folio
#

...I wonder if machine spirits can do fate weaving inside autobot city like the department of grumpy fate guys can do outside of it.

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Or if it's running on read-only

upper stratus
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i assume they have something similar to pattern spiders, which, by necessity, would have to be able to do it

tulip folio
#

P4tt3rn Spid3rs

upper stratus
#

being ascetic is a lot less impressive for someone who doesn't need to eat

image.png
tulip folio
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Yep but they can do it just fine if they want to.

upper stratus
#

they're starving my sid for CMoS training rn and this alchemical is stealing valor

tulip folio
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It's actually one of my necromancer's intimacies XD

# 
Defining: The Dead Are Part Of Our Community (Principle), Autochthon (Faithful Hope)
Major: Vos-Ulos (Positive Tie, Protective Love), Divine Ministers (Positive Tie, Awed Respect), Divine Minister Ku (Negative Tie, Exasperation), I Am Not A Monster (Principle), Spellcraft (Positive Tie, Joy)
Minor: Half-Forged (Negative Tie, Horror), Food (Positive Tie, Comfort), Tunnel People (Positive Tie, Sympathy)
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It's funny being an Alchemical as the Divine Ministers are a big deal but they're also...guys. If you live near them, you've likely seen them out and about.

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They're a lot more 'You'll have a stance on this' than most Third Circle Souls.

upper stratus
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just some fellas

tulip folio
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There's a place in the corebook where Divine Minister Ku's deadbeat daughter has been sent to the ass end of nowhere to learn some responsibility.

upper stratus
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im sure that'll work

tulip folio
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Which is like if Octavian was told to fuck off until he stops being so much of a meathead. XD

bleak hazel
tulip folio
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As they were the other guys alongsid Sids who had 'Fuck it, crash the entire economy at chargen' with Gossamer.

bleak hazel
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You want "spirit-summoning conscription"

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which is also one at a time but considerably more limited

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fun upgrade to go "surprise spies" but my Abyssal doesn't have that one yet

tulip folio
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Ah, Shade Summoning.

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That's why my search wasn't finding it.

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I just spent a minute poking at my PDF and going 'you're not missing bits are you?'

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Until I just searched 'conscription' and found it.

bleak hazel
#

Whoops

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anyway that one

tulip folio
#

...huh, interestingly enough, the Abyssal one is more permanent if you work at it.

# 
At the end of the story, the Merits are lost as the recruited characters move on from the organization, unless the Storyteller deems that the Abyssal’s treatment of them qualifies to retain them long-term as Story Merits.
#

So you can over time amass a lot of dots with that charm

bleak hazel
#

Still, tiny bit much for essence 1 zero prereqs

tulip folio
#

Fair. I'll make 'what it can affect' scale up with essence.

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The intent is for it to be the starting charm for their 'Making Dudes From Gossamer' charms.

#

With it moving from there into the 'Summon a Battle Group' one

# 
Transient Works of Flesh and Bone
Cost: 10m, 1 WP; Mins: Charisma 4, Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One scene
Prereqs: Awakened Dream Manufacture
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 an 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

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: Transient Works of Flesh and Bone
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.
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As the intent is that 'Making Dudes' is something they're pretty good at.

bleak hazel
#

Guessing you decided to make them very much Celestial level then, if they're getting strong sidegrades of high essence solaroid charms

#

I still think "just summon a bunch of merits" probably needs the five or so prerequisites it has on the Abyssal tree because it is extremely flexible even if it's only one or two categories

#

Full excellency that and do Allies and it's literally "summon friendly Celestial Exalt"

tulip folio
#

...ah...that's tricky considering none of their charm trees is longer than 3 deep due to the way they work. I might go back to the drawing board, as 'Making Shit From Nothing But Gossamer' was supposed to be The Thing They Are Really Good At. XD

bleak escarp
#

I think Raksha should very much not be celestial level, and honestly shouldn't even be DB level. That said it's fine for them to have areas of strength.

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Like I love the fair folk, they're what got me into this game (before I fell hard for Lunars), but they ain't supposed to be that much of a big deal.

tulip folio
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...I mean, one of them punked the UCS himself. They've got a pretty broad level of power.