#Exalted

1 messages · Page 13 of 1

wise ocean
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I aim to displease (your players)

bleak hazel
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now I think about it, Alchemicals might quite like heaven after getting acclimatized

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it has a huge surplus of rare metals and gemstones, a sea made of mercury and a rail line, it's just like home

next delta
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But is it dangerous enough?

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Might not be dark or cramped enough either

bleak hazel
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it can be plenty dangerous

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it's a corrupt and surprisingly violent paradise, which somehow is just about not an oxymoron

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I really like the Carnival of Meeting here

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there's got to be one or two Sids who are assigned the pleasant duty of watching the festival every year as a kind of mini-holiday

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ah wait, there's even one for the alchs to join in on!

tulip folio
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New Background: Flickers of Time (2 Dot or 4 Dot)
Prereqs: Making A Bad Decision

Somehow your character has unstable and highly disruptive flickers of times that were or might have been. For some exalts this might be the result of unnaturally strong past lives or too much experimentation with Temporal Sorcery, while for Jadeborn it can be result of interlinking with Pattern Spiders and the Loom of Fate shattering open caches of Pre-Geass Knowledge indiscriminately.

Rules - As Whispers. Replace mentions of Death with Geomancy, Necromancy with Sorcery, Undead with Automatons and the Underworld with Manses and First Age Sites. When you invoke it for a decision point, rather than Nihilistic Despair, it is an Erratic Wonder as infinite possibilities fill a far too finite mind.

Initiation: Void Seer

To become a void seer is to attempt to hold the entirety of creation within's one mind. Much like attempting to force an entire ocean into a bottle, the container will shatter. But from those shards of sanity grow an intuitive wisdom, an ability to reach out and pull the strings of reality together into shapes designed long ago but unseen by any other. The most common void seers are those of the Mountain Folk, the entirety of the loom of fate spinning within minds no longer able to handle it. However, some mortals have achieved a similar blind idiot godhood through deadly amounts of intoxicants, the madness of the wyld of becoming the victim of spells that unravel time itself.

Shaping Rituals

Unlimited Options: While shaping a spell, the sorcerer may invoke her Flickers of Time to reflexively roll (Flickers of Time x2) dice, gaining sorcerous motes equal to her successes. She adds (Essence) automatic successes on this roll when shaping her control spell. Either during the same scene or in the scene that follows, she suffers the consequences of a failed Willpower roll against the Madness Derangement (Exalted, p. 168).

Geomantic Beacon: The sorcerer may bathe in the geomantic fires that burn in a manse’s heart to gain (Essence + Willpower)
sorcerous motes, at the price of taking a level of aggravated damage. These motes last until the end of the story, or until she next claims motes from the manse. While within the bounds of the manse, she also gains one additional sorcerous mote each turn while casting a spell.

Adamant Unweaving Rune: The sorcerer recycles the lost motes of her foes works against them, channelling them like the great Dragon Lines. When the Sorcerer uses Countermagic, they gain the same number of sorcerous motes as they remove from the affected spell. These motes do not stack (Being replaced if you use Countermagic again and would generate more motes than you currently have from this) and last until the end of the scene
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Merits

Chronopsychí (••): Once per story, the sorcerer’s player may ask the Storyteller for guidance from the flow of endless data, receiving it in the form of a prophetic dream, feverish vision, or strange omen. This guidance calls the sorcerer to perform some quest or duty, typically equivalent to an inconvenient task (Exalted, p. 216). While the significance of this action may not always be clear, its consequences will serve Autochthon, aid in the creation of wonder or oppose the actions of Enemies of Fate, though their purpose or relevance may not always be clear. Fulfilling this task grants the sorcerer two Willpower, which can raise her above her permanent Willpower.

Crystal Soul (••): Jadeborn, Pattern Spiders and Automations recognise the sorcerer as kin, which can be leveraged as a Minor Tie of trust and respect.

The Blood of Creation (•): The sorcerer can make a difficulty 3 (Awareness + [Lore or Craft]) roll after a few minutes of calculation to analyse local Essence flows. Success lets her detect the presence of a demesne, manse, or anomaly within the Dragon Lines within (Occult x3) miles, along with the distance and direction to it. If she spends an hour performing more complex attunements, she can attempt a difficulty 5 roll to sense such sights within (Occult x20) miles. She can attempt to detect a specific site, or search for whichever is nearest to her.

Updated with fluff and some small wording adjustments.

velvet raft
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Thinking about how to make the other Solar combat charm trees more interesting

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Brawl is good because it has grappling, onslaught penalties, ways to move people around, ways to atatatatata, and ways to bypass defenses, but also glaring holes in defense and in multi-target

tulip folio
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What do people think of the artifact Seven Star Alignment from the Sidereals book? It's an odd one.

bleak hazel
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Sevenfold Arcana Strike is very nice, that lets you work in sorcery while keeping withering attacks going

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otherwise not sure, haven't done a ton of battle sorcery

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mostly battle necromancy

tulip folio
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It seems like it could be very funny with 'I'm a sidereal, I have sidereal martial arts'

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Striking Through Eternity + Crimson Lotus Enlightenment + Flight of the Brilliant Raptor (Or other blasty spell) is a comically expensive but also very funny option.

bleak hazel
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the thing you might actually reach in a normal length game is Seven Constellations Stance

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which is just a free action

tulip folio
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That's fair, Crimson Lotus Enlightenment is essence 5 and the stuff before that isn't as crazy.

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Unorthodox Incantation Tactic seems pretty decent though. Adding a disarm to any spell and costs the same as just Using Your Excellency being 1 mote per die, if you're occult 5.

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Foretold Dweomer Counterstrike is...I have no clue what to think of it. If you are going to counterstrike, why didn't you just Cast The Spell Normally as an attack.

bleak hazel
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the duration is indefinite and it's only 1 mote, you can load the spell into it long before you're anywhere near a fight

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this is an amazing action econ artifact

tulip folio
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Fair, like the sorcery capturing cords

fierce star
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speaking of sorcery, I've go ta homebrew sorcerous initiation I came up with for the alchemicals game I'm joining and I wouldn't mind some eyes on it:

Extrapolation of the God-Machine
It is not an uncommon heresy in Autochthonia to believe that humanity was created in the image of the Great Maker; our brilliance is his writ small, our diseases manifestations of His blight. His genius is ours writ unfathomable; his body, like ours, a series of mechanistic devices writ across space, working together to form a greater whole. Those sorcerors of Autochthonia who seek enlightenment in the viscera of a Surgeon's workplace often follow this initiation, utilizing knowledge of the human body to effect changes in the body of the Maker.

Shaping Rituals:
Anatomical Study: The sorcerer may spend time dissecting a dead human (or vivisecting a living one) to better understand the relationship between mankind and the Great Maker. Doing so is a simple (Intelligence + Medicine) roll that takes eight hours to perform; the sorcerer banks sorcerous motes equal to her successes, that last until the end of the story or the next use of the ritual. When performed on a living person, she adds one non-charm dice to this roll for each health level she inflicts on them as part of her vivisection, up to three total. If she kills her patient, she gains no motes from this ritual. She cannot perform this ritual on herself, and cannot bank more than 15 motes at a time with this ritual.

Field Research: Whenever the sorcerer makes a Decisive attack with a melee weapon that inflicts lethal damage, she may reduce the damage she deals by half to bank sorcerous motes equal to the damage she would have dealt with the attack, before charms. These last for three turns or until she casts her next spell.

Experimental Treatment: Whenever the sorcerer uses Medicine to treat poison or treat disease, she may bank sorcerous motes equal to the disease's virulence or the poison's damage. These motes last until used or the end of the story, and may stack, but the sorcerer may not have more than ten motes banked in such a way.

Merits:
Hypocritical Oath * or ** (Requires Martial Arts): You may use scalpels as light weapons with the lethal, melee, piercing, poisonable and thrown (medium) tags; it is your skill with them that makes them weapons, and unless someone is aware of your reputation with them, they will not be recognized as a weapon in your hands. At two dots, you may treat scalpels as knives, chakrams, darts, and hand needles for martial arts. Artifact scalpels have the same tags as their mundane variants, but use light artifact weapon stats, and can be separate artifacts or provided by equipment such as a Resplendent Satchel of Healing. Scalpels from artifacts such as a Resplendent Satchel Of Healing do not require additional attunement, but cannot have Evocations awakened.

As Above, So Below, As The West Goes The East **: You do not suffer a penalty on using Medicine to heal or repair any living creature, dead creature, spirit, or automaton capable of independent movement or thought.

A Healer's Touch ***: Your dominant hand (or both hands, if you're ambidextrous) glow with soft light representative of your skills as a healer, which can be dulled by the simple act of wearing gloves. Whenever you cast a spell dedicated to medicine, healing, fertility, or general health and well-being, you reduce the cost by three motes or one willpower for rituals.
tulip folio
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Is this how Blowing Your Cover as a Sid works?

coral wraith
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yes

tulip folio
tulip folio
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I wonder if there's any way to make old 2e-style Resplendent Destinies. For when you wanted a more Detailed Character.

fierce star
bleak hazel
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trying to figure out how much soak you actually need to get into diminishing return territory

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14 soak is enough that if someone hits you with a heavy artifact weapon backed by Strength 5, it will go to Overwhelming only, and all future soak is cancelling out raw withering damage boosters and extra successes on the attack roll

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which admittedly are common and cheap

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19 seems like a good number because if you're rolling around with the traditional Defence 6 base and an onslaught negator people probably aren't rolling more than five or so extra successes to hit you very often

fierce star
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Is that 6 base post-charms/excellencies?

bleak hazel
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No, just Dex 5 Ability 5 + spec

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You don't have to play exalted this way, don't get me wrong, I've had great fights with Dex 3 melee 3 characters, but I'm a gremlin and I like optimising fite if and when I make combat characters

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unless they're Solaroids in which case there's not a not of fun in it and it will be a better game if you hold back

fierce star
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This is, admittedly, not a combat-primary character, but I'm sitting at... 5 after weapon

bleak hazel
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My non-combat Abyssal is also evasion 5, that's more than fine

fierce star
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4 stamina, 3 MA, no specialty, medium artifact weapon (getting to use stam instead of dex becuase alchemicals get all the stat swaps)

bleak hazel
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I'm specifically talking here about full moons and battles sids and Immaculate masters slamming into each other and doing big kung fu, everyone else can chill out

fierce star
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ah, kk

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I'm not super versed in what expected optimization looks like in ex3, so I was a little concerned at ifrst

bleak hazel
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noncombat characters are also way more willing to blow infinity motes on boosting their defences because they are not intending to be beaten on persistently

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Optimization requirements in 3e are extremely relaxed unless you're a deeb in a Solar circle or something

fierce star
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(seriously though seriously I use stam instead of dex for parry, appearance instead of manipulation for guile, perception instead of dexterity for evasion, intelligence instead of wits for resolve, str instead of dex for attacks with heavy or unarmed weapons, and per instead of dex for making ranged attacks)

bleak hazel
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ah yes, an Alchemical designed by the great architect Borgstrom-Moran

fierce star
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admittedly for the latter two I can't benefit from non-transpuissant effects that boost my dot rating, replace it with a higher rating, or effects that grant double successes on str or per

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lol

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oh and str instead of dex for movement actions

prisma sun
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I think Exalted is built around not being fully optimized being the most fun experience

bleak hazel
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Yeah, you can chill out very much on the charop and just do fun stuff

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This is purely me messing around and trying to figure out the underlying maths for kicks

fierce star
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Legit

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I was/am feeling cautious about it primarily becuase of my background in ex2, lol

bleak hazel
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There are no paranoia combos in this edition, the guidelines in the core book are actually good

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An ox-body or two, some basic equipment and 3-5 combat charms including an onslaught negator is fine for 90% of situations I have personally encountered

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If I had to suggest a basic kit for non-combat primary characters it would basically just be the first four charms of Dreaming Pearl

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Here's an evasion booster, here's a weapon with a basic damage adder, here's armour with a basic soak adder, here's a get out of jail free card and here's a Form to make it all better in a big scrap

fierce star
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legit

bleak hazel
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You can go zero combat charms and subsist entirely on excellencies and a dream if your party has fighting handled but I find it's more fun when you have buttons to press

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Looks like the rules of thumb for soak maths are something like
0-10 soak: almost certainly useful, minimal diminishing returns
11-20 soak: probably useful against strong opponents

20 soak: starting to get a bit marginal here
30 soak: local Full Moon refuses to change out of dinosaur form

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If your lunar reaches 40 soak consider staging an intervention

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if anyone else reaches 40 soak then applaud the feat and then stage an intervention anyway

fierce star
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okay what can I do with alchemicals here, if I'm REALLY pushing it, at chargen

next delta
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(also it's the weirdest part of the combat system)

bleak hazel
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You still want all that soak to protect your own initiative pool so you can spend it on murder, but yes, I am assuming you're being hit and purely trying to work out what soak levels you need to bring various problems down to min damage

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there is a point where all your enemies just go "fuck it, maximise the Overwhelming"

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Brawl Solars have functionally infinite whelm, martial artists occasionally have big soakbuster moves, Endings sids eventually end up with fists that whelm so hard they count as destructive devices and you have to register them

fierce star
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6 stam, 11 armor, 3 from embedded armor plating, +3 from excellency, so... 23 at chargen with an investment of, uh, two charms (and maximizing stamina) and a suit of heavy artifact armor. That's at essence 1, of course, purely looking at 'what can I get at chargen'.

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assuming no MAs or evocaitons or spells going off

bleak hazel
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Control spell Invulnerable Skin of Bronze for +1, bamboo stone for +2, one of the soak martial arts for more, hang on I'll check which ones work at E1

next delta
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Does the mutation soak merit stack with stuff?

fierce star
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oh, 10 more from five dot unusual hide + carapace/shell

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yes, explicitly

next delta
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That one seemed a bit nuts to me

fierce star
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That's... two charms worth, though you can only buy one of hte mutations charm at chargen for alchemicals

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so we'll drop it to 4 dots + carapace/shell, which is seven, so eight more

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that's 5 charms spent--stam transpuissant, embedded armor plating, manifold transhuman, sorcery and MA installs.

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so 24 soak right now

bleak hazel
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Toad Form adds (Resistance) Soak

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so if we're purely going for maximum soak that's another 5

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you know I think this might happen occasionally with this build

image.png
fierce star
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I think we'd rather use earth dragon form

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since toad isn't compatible with armor

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and earth dragon is strength based, so we cna bump that up to 6

bleak hazel
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ah yes good point

fierce star
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because attribute exalt

bleak hazel
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I'm not sure that works

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I'm pretty sure bonuses over 5 don't count unless you have that one alch keyword on the charm

fierce star
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hmm

bleak hazel
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yeah here we are

fierce star
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I thought MA charms ignored that, but you're probably right on a second read through

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Still, extra 5 soak puts us to 29

bleak hazel
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yeah, general rule is that dots over 5 don't count for calculations unless otherwise specified

next delta
fierce star
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manifold transhuman implants can be purchased (essence/2, rounded up) times

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each purchase gets you 6 dots of mutations set when you buy the charm

bleak hazel
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getting to 20 soak isn't very difficult for anyone who can rock heavy artifact armour, reaching the point where soak returns start diminishing is mostly tricky for martial artists who are stuck with 5 soak from Silken

next delta
bleak hazel
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not that I know of, but there are a few instant hardness boosts that a character may or may not decide to invoke against a given attack

next delta
bleak hazel
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and I don't generally see GMs providing the players with a big sheet of all the enemies' charms

next delta
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Ah right. I guess you could gamble. Rarely seems worth it lol

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True, but I think you're supposed to let the players know about gotchas? That would be my interpretation of that line anyways

bleak hazel
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which line?

next delta
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The mechanical transparency one

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Unless I hallucinated it

bleak hazel
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there are a lot of lines in the Exalted core book

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ah, yes, found it

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it does say "when your enemy has used a charm"

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so I think you aren't meant to provide your players with every enemy character sheet before the fight

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but I could see it either way

fierce star
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You can buy mutaitons with merits per normal, yeah, you can just be built this way

bleak hazel
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there are also things like "add X extra successes on the attack roll to your decisive damage" which might nudge you above hardness, and you might chance that if you only need, say, 1-2 extra successes above parry

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and then your enemy can choose to boost parry or not boost parry

fierce star
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but those are permanent and I might not want to always be a turtle when I'm an alchemical

bleak hazel
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so in practice decisives bouncing is quite rare but not impossible-with-good-play

next delta
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Ok, I feel like "hey, the enemy could boost their hardness to X" is reasonable information to give the player and then they can choose to gamble if they want

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Mostly because not beating hardness really sucks lol

bleak hazel
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there are also "soft decisives", often counterattacks, that don't use your initiative, and you might want to throw one of those for onslaught or whatever even if you know it'll bounce

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being able to negate onslaught is standard issue for serious combat Exalts but there are lots of big stompy monsters that are not serious combat Exalts and still worth bullying

next delta
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I guess some AoEs might also bounce because you care about hitting other people

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(though not many that don't split initiative)

bleak hazel
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easy 32

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8 more might be a little tricky to scrounge

fierce star
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I did, yeah

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or... I thought I did

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6 stamina, 8 mutations, 11 armor, 2 bamboo, 1 ISOB control, 3 EAP, 3 excellency, 5 earth dragon...

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I missed the first time I think that adds up to 39

bleak hazel
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in practice I think I've only seen one build that was deliberately built to throw 40+ withering damage and it was a build called Tiger Tiger, who was a Tiger Lunar Tiger Stylist whose gimmick was that she searched every available book at the time for every withering damage booster in a martial art and used all of them at once

next delta
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Martial Arts are codified things so she could do that in-universe

bleak hazel
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wait, I found her in the Onyx Path lunar build thread, she only throws 31

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36 with a couple more charms for Eyes of the Wood Dragon

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because she was a Lunar she wasn't completely optimized and instead had the standard issue Lunar omnicapability, but still

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Lunars are the second-largest of the standard exalts at low level, after Dawn Solaroids, because they get the vast majority of their shapeshifting combat power in one huge lump at chargen

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so a stacked E1 full moon is probably going to beat an E1 Sid/Alchemical/presumably Getimian once they're out, just because the latter need to wait to get levels to unlock or upgrade their big stuff before they can match turning into a tyrant lizard and throwing multiple decisives that don't reset initiative out of an uncontested grapple control roll

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They also have bigger early mote pools than anyone else, which evens out to the point an E5 Sid and E5 Lunar actually have identical mote counts. Not sure what's going on with that.

next delta
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That might be the case for Infernals even if they drop the supernals for them. As they can turn into demon things

bleak hazel
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still not entirely sure the meta play for E3 combat sids isn't to dip Ways of Exaltation for efficiency and then immediately go 4-5 charms deep into CMOS for the grapple/knockback resistance charm that negates the first two grapples you get hit with

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because grapple builds are really mean

fierce star
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I have a casteless lunar in a game that's probably dead who I intend to go whole ham into grapple builds, given her spirit shape is a giant octopus

bleak hazel
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and CMOS also allows you to hang out in midair using a Thread of Fate like a whip in case your opponent doesn't have any schmovement

fierce star
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(she's casteless for thematic reasons of 'hasn't even met the pact yet' over any particular charop reason)

bleak hazel
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fate is strongly convinced you have eight legs and you can as such remain firmly balanced on the remaining six after having your two physical legs punted into orbit

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big fan of Dance of the Hungry Spider

bleak hazel
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Conversions where no logical relationship can be established are impossible, such as converting Craft (Cooking) dots into Craft (Tailoring)
Solar craft tree: "clearly nobody has ever made both food and outfits out of the same plant or animal before"

fierce star
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hmm

next delta
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Clearly got to route it though Craft (field dressing) first

fierce star
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if you only hav edots in survival, can you still process wild food to make it edible, or do you have to have craft (cooking) as well

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how deep does the craft hole go

bleak hazel
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only the greatest Solar prodigies can both find and cook food

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(nah, I'm pretty sure Survival just Produces Food)

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really craft (cooking) being a thing is kind of odd in the first place because it's stressed that things normal humans don't have significant difficulty doing aren't rolls

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the lower ranks of the craft tree only kick in with the kind of big vocational skills a mortal has to spend a lifetime getting good at, and the mid to high ranks take three months to ten years per project

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unsure what Glorious Solar Chef is getting done with his legendary projects

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really really really really big cake

wise ocean
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glorious solar chef runs a three-michelin restaurant on the blessed isle

bleak hazel
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wyld-shaping several new continents to introduce Glorious Solar Cocoa to Creation and then spending ten years making the perfect yeast

wise ocean
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this is unironically how some of the best chefs in the world get product

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building years-long relationships with producers who make the exact kind of things they want and then finding the best ways to get them to table in a seasonally appropriate but fresh fashion

bleak hazel
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meanwhile Solar Blacksmith is just throwing legendary sword after legendary sword out of his window to build up white points, so they're using them as cutlery

upper stratus
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can i have one

bleak hazel
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how many Twilight smiths even were there, since there were only 60 twilights during the First Age and there are both lots of skills Twilights could specialise in and lots of crafts within Craft

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were there just two guys doing all the Legendary metalwork

upper stratus
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it js funny that 3e tried to do a thing where it's like "every artifact is a unique and special work with a name and its own story" and them the craft system is designed to make your churn random shit out for magic points

bleak hazel
# upper stratus can i have one

Abyssal Craftgar needs a few months to make his own soulsteel gear and then he will be opening up Crimson's Official Artifact Atelier

next delta
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The Twlights all went insane because they realized they were the only ones who could maintain all the infrastructure everywhere

bleak hazel
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the standard deal is that you bring him magical materials, he makes 80% of it into stuff you want and keeps the rest

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other options are available

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(please engage in Bargain actions with me, I am a Bureaucracy Apocalyptic)

next delta
bleak hazel
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to do legendary projects you do need to mass produce artifacts

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or at least palaces

next delta
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Oh rip lol

bleak hazel
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to build an Artifact N/A you need... probably about 60 white points, which is 12 3-dot daiklaives

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hang on let me open up Wise Artificer's Insight and see if you can eventually git gud enough to do those in one roll

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if you comically overinvest in craft

next delta
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Wild Hunt Party Member A: "I think we found where the anathema lives"
B: "What makes you say that?"
A: <gestures at all the palaces and other large buildings>

wise ocean
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there is some fun psuedo-horror to the idea of walking into a mountain valley and finding ten thousand perfectly identical, perfectly beautiful, completely soulless palaces

upper stratus
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i've been thinking about if i actually want silk armor cause rn my soak is 3 and i have some humble resistance charms but wearing armor would turn off some perks on said resistance charms and dodge charms

bleak hazel
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what the fuck, craftgar

image.png
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this is one roll

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you can just bash out Eyes of Autocthon

next delta
bleak hazel
velvet raft
bleak hazel
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since I don't have SMA yet

upper stratus
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im hard set on my vbos

bleak hazel
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you're up at E3, right?

upper stratus
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ye

bleak hazel
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yeah, at that point you're committed and SMA doesn't allow armour anyway, so no harm done

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I'm but a humble E1, nearly E2 swordsman

upper stratus
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well silk armor is allowed

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but it tjrns off uh

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perk on absenr self

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and the resistance charm i have. lets me penalize decisive damage roll

bleak hazel
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what is your evasion anyway

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it is basically +1 non-charm evasion but only when unarmoured, so yeah, I can see why you'd want that

upper stratus
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6 at close range

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dex 5 dodge 5, close range specialty

bleak hazel
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I am still trying to work up to 15-20 soak without my Sid finding a wyld-tainted river and shoving random body parts into it until he gets Unusual Hide

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so I do really quite want the Silken Armour

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the permanent mote cost is a pain though

velvet raft
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Unusual Hide w/Subtle seems funny

bleak hazel
upper stratus
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?

bleak hazel
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hang on

upper stratus
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honestly i've been thinking about the dodge specialty and maybe changing it to something more easily applicable

bleak hazel
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there's this incredibly odd light armour that costs more motes to attune but counts as Not Armour instead of Not Armour (only for martial arts)

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Freedom's Cadence, 7 mote attunement

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downside is that it falls off in Crash, and that's a goddamn problem if you're a dedicated martial artist

upper stratus
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right but it still counts as armor for other purposes right

bleak hazel
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no

upper stratus
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👁

bleak hazel
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resistance charm away

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also one of the better looking fits

upper stratus
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im actually pretty well set for decisives even if i get hit

velvet raft
# bleak hazel

There's also a greater sidereal hearthstone that can do this to any light armor

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And doesn't break on crash

bleak hazel
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oh yeah that might actually be a better call

upper stratus
# bleak hazel

oh yea thay basically just turns menoff entirely when i crash

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like straight up might as well leave

velvet raft
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If you can swing Manse 5 it seems to me like a really strong pickup, since it's a hearthstone + demesne 4

bleak hazel
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yeah, I was thinking "this seems cool" and then realised that if my E3 sid got tagged while wearing that I would just clatter to the floor making the Lego game death noise

wise ocean
velvet raft
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And that improved mote regen may not help you in this fight, but there's a good chance it helps you for the next one

bleak hazel
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the hearthstone is also only for martial arts

upper stratus
bleak hazel
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only way to get non-Armour Armour is Freedom's Cadence or one random Solar charm in Miracles

upper stratus
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fucking solars

bleak hazel
#

it's Apocryphal, which is really funny to me

#

infinite free excellencies and damage dice for 1 mote, in full armour? go right ahead

velvet raft
#

Obviously wear Freedom's Cadence and the hearthstone at the same time

bleak hazel
#

medium artifact armour while shirtless? go to hell

bleak hazel
#

because if you crash you keep your martial arts

velvet raft
#

Yeah it's a legit good pickup

bleak hazel
#

casual 8 merit dots for Shirt (comfortable)

upper stratus
#

i saw a charm in (i think) centipede that adds higher of athlerics or dodge to soak which would work pretty well for me

bleak hazel
#

imagine how comfy that would be while not crashed though

#

lounging around in my solid metal shirt that feels like the finest linen

velvet raft
#

Also, any non-dependent hearthstone has another inherent benefit

#

You can power a dependent one

#

And most of the really strong ones are dependent

bleak hazel
#

that one is dependent

#

it doesn't specify how many hearthstone slots Cadence has

velvet raft
#

Aha

#

aaaaaaaaaa

bleak hazel
#

oh, one

#

ouch

#

hang on, I can apply Sidereal Bullshit to this

velvet raft
#

New Rules charm, Sidereal Bullshit Methodology

wise ocean
#

that's just the bureaucracy tree

bleak hazel
#

Sids are the weakest Celestials in a direct slugfest but also the most likely to be able to say "wait I have a charm for this" in literally any other situation

#

my Essence 1 Sid dipped a single charm in awareness and can now track people for months on end with no trail whatsoever

wise ocean
#

U'tille Teanifeh, Bureau of Destiny

bleak hazel
#

at high essence they also become as good in a fight as Lunars or Alchs because they get access to the strategic nonsense reserves

upper stratus
#

how survival heads look at me when i start tracking with awareness

bleak hazel
#

really tracking with awareness makes more sense than most of the Sidereal literal-metaphor swaps

#

that seems like the kind of thing you should be able to do

velvet raft
upper stratus
bleak hazel
#

aww, you can't use Demense Emulation Practice to enable a dependent hearthstone in one of your artifacts, only the other way around

#

and yeah Awareness is nuts

#

Sid Awareness especially

velvet raft
#

"Sidereal shows up in my Solar's house and makes vague threats and then disappears" becomes "my Sidereal goes to a Solar's house and makes vague threats and then disappears"

upper stratus
#

i mean in the sense thay if you let it track normally speaking it becomes too much

bleak hazel
#

Solars have thirty charms of See Good, whereas Sids get a full espionage and counterespionage suite with bonus prophecy and Glorious Sidereal Plate that works unarmoured

bleak hazel
#

but it's not prima facie absurd on the same kind of level that "yeah, I tank with Presence" would be for a non-Sidde splat

velvet raft
#

I wish Solar Awareness had more than four interesting charms

wise ocean
#

"yeah, I tank with Appearance - no one can bear to harm my beautiful mien and so pull their blows subconsciously at the last second" would be incredibly funny

bleak hazel
#

they have a form for that

upper stratus
bleak hazel
#

also the entire dodge tree uses App as its secondary stat, yeah

wise ocean
#

incredible.

bleak hazel
#

I adore this one

#

none of my characters will ever make good use of it because none of my sids are super hot, but it's great

#

Sids truly are moving different

upper stratus
#

i've been thinking about the one lets me reflexively establish concealment with appearnce +dodge after successfully asserting guile or evasion but i think as an endings caste i love flaring that shit too much to build into combat stealth

bleak hazel
#

yeah Endings love being loud

upper stratus
#

ironically

bleak hazel
#

especially my guy because his main efficiency booster is going to be Ways of Exaltation

upper stratus
#

for how they're often depicted

#

don't get me wrong i'll be very happy to start with an ambush

#

stealth 5 and all

bleak hazel
#

Endings are the classic sid assassins, where they spend two months shadowing you, slap down a really mean prophecy, deliver one cryptic warning and then go as loud as humanly possible

#

stabbing guys with chunks of comic sound effect text, etc.

#

High essence sids are monsters because at E4 they can suddenly slam down permanent TN+1 on everything their enemy does

#

throw in a successful Tears of the Blade if you're lucky and even a Dawn Solar is really feeling it

fierce star
#

funnily enough alchemical assassins are also encouraged to be as pretty as possible

bleak hazel
#

you do have to be pretty jacked to use Descending Endings sadly so my guy isn't great at it

fierce star
#

their going ghost charm is appearance, and has an upgrade at ess 3 app 7 to let it apply to a whole group

upper stratus
#

im the appearance 5 manip 1 guile 5 anyway assassin

fierce star
#

at ess 5 battlegroups, even

bleak hazel
#

my guy uses social stealth or nothing

#

0 stealth, Underling Invisibility Practice

upper stratus
#

im layering

#

im stacking actual sneaking on top of UIP

fierce star
#

... oh my god there's a charm that's just the neuralyzer from men in black

upper stratus
#

im walking outside fatemaxxing

bleak hazel
#

you can really see how Sids have the magikarp thing going on occasionally, because an E1 sword solar is Amazing at Swords, whereas an E4 sword solar is Amazing at Swords (x4)

#

an E1 sid is dangerous but nothing special, an E4 sid drops bars that literally melt cities

#

"volcanic eruption" is more Solar territory but you can always pick the city up and move it next to an active volcano if you want

upper stratus
#

pull down the sky :)

bleak hazel
#

E5 Prophecysid can lay a Frequency 5, Scope 5, Power 4, Duration 1 prophecy in just over a month if they're lucky, six weeks with some effort

#

which is "all characters in this small city are extremely screwed"

upper stratus
#

but misc

#

that costs precious exp :c

bleak hazel
#

it's only Duration 1, you'll get it back in a month

upper stratus
#

my charms

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

martial arts makes sense to me because if I could just wildly dip everything I would commit many crimes

#

not so with craft

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

most obviously, sticking Searing Edge Attack on a sidereal does Many Things

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

(it removes Essence init from the target without giving it you, Sids have a martial arts form at E4 that boosts your essence for magic calcs by 2, you can now punch for Overwhelming 9 + 10 flat levels of init damage when you win clashes)

bleak hazel
#

his enemy is at +1 on all their dice

#

one of my dice is literally twice as good as one of theirs

#

E4 sids should not be allowed to hang around places for several weeks

#

move that man on, he's had enough fate juice to drink

upper stratus
#

i don't have time for all that. there's other missions. and paperwork back home

coral wraith
#

objection. im introducting a fact that lets me stay longer

bleak hazel
#

Sids tend to live a little bit longer than your average Exalt so a lot of them are fairly high essence, too

#

this is just about the only thing that allows 99-ish people to do as much as they do

tulip folio
#

I wonder what % is increases the rate of mote drain to force the Invincible Sword Princess to fight against Sid Prophesy while she eats entire armies of dragonblooded.

bleak hazel
#

a lot

#

because the deebs are also buffed by it if the prophecy is something like "the Solar Anathema in [area] will be slain in battle", although it's encouraged to make the prophecies a little bit more cryptic and interesting than that

#

a deeb with prophetic buffs is very similar to a stock Sidereal, excellency-wise

coral wraith
#

give the deeb commander a lil' horoscope

#

as a treat

bleak hazel
#

they're still not good enough to reliably beat Essence 5 hail-shattering practice, but they're good enough to force her to burn lots of motes on it + boosting parry

tulip folio
#

Yay, making her actually work for it 😛

bleak hazel
#

E5 sid, notably, cannot beat E5 supermegasolar unless they are very lucky, but honestly if the E5 dawn caste couldn't 1v1 the guy who can coup small nations by doing paperwork for a month it would be kind of unfair

velvet raft
bleak hazel
#

the Dawns do need to be allowed to do some things

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

also helps, yeah

tulip folio
#

Directional Censor: "Okay, what is the stupid problem where the destiny guys couldn't solve this themselves...OH SHIT THAT'S AN E5 DAWN. I can't solve this problem either!"

upper stratus
#

and that's when Jane Endings shows up and stabs her

next delta
bleak hazel
#

celestial lions are actually quite large

#

they swing for 19 dice against anyone they can plausibly say "STOP YOU VIOLATED THE LAW" to

tulip folio
#

...that's a damn solid amount of dice

fierce star
#

literal camo field

bleak hazel
#

which is like

#

3-5 motes

#

but they'll add up

tulip folio
fierce star
#

not ghost in the 'spirit' sense but in the--yeah

upper stratus
#

are you looking to dematerialize

fierce star
#

phasing through things is in dexterity

#

which,k funnily enough? not a dematerialization charm

# 
Transphase Engine
Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Dexterity 7, Essence 3
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Augmented Drive-Chain Assembly
Starmetal pistons fire in a spherical assembly adjoining the Alchemical’s Essence reservoir,
shifting her out of phase with reality.
The Alchemical makes a movement action without crossing the space between, allowing her to pass
through walls and similar obstructions and to bypass environmental hazards and difficult terrain. She
can’t cross through barriers that span more than one range band.
Submodules
Phase Shift Apparatus (6xp; Essence 4): The Alchemical can phase through larger obstructions by using
this Charm again on each subsequent turn, waiving its Willpower cost. She benefits from full cover while
doing so, though appropriate magic or stunts can circumvent this. If she doesn’t use this Charm on her
turn, she’s ejected from the barrier at the point she entered it.
tulip folio
#

But I wasn't sure if there was an in-charmset way to do it when ID said that.

bleak hazel
#

Okay, well I rolled out another fight against 3 DBs. It took five hours.

#

solars

velvet raft
#

was it melee

#

your mistake was using melee

bleak hazel
tulip folio
#

One of her evocations was borrowing the Dematerialize effect from the Belt of Shadow Walking.

bleak hazel
#

(one deeb died immediately, two E3 deebs cleaned up after a really long time)

#

if you can actually keep enough deebs alive you will eventually get 'em because after the first turn ubercombo the Solar was mostly out of juice

fierce star
#

I like that bit in the second to last paragraph about three bloodapes

bleak hazel
#

what this indicates is that the fight in Return of the Jedi where Darth Sidious kills three jedi in ten seconds and then takes several minutes with Mace Windu is accurate

velvet raft
#

XD

bleak hazel
#

interested to see how E3 siddy does here because E3 sid has a base parry defence of 10 with stunts, but I cannot be bothered to roll it out and the Sid can't nova hard enough to kill a deeb in one round

#

so he probably just gets bonked

tulip folio
#

Also: Yay, got 4 evocations sorted for my Alchs's armour.

bleak hazel
#

post evocations

tulip folio
# 
Souls of the Faultless
Cost: 5m; Mins: Essence 1
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Counterattack, Uniform
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None
The souls trapped within Innocent Oblivion cry out, attempting to shield the wearer from harm.

Whenever the wearer successfully defends against an attack, she may use Souls of the Faultless to make a counterattack with (Charisma + Presence) to instill her attacker with a positive tie towards herself or a negative tie towards themselves, adding a number of dice equal to the attacker’s Essence (maximum five). The context of the Tie, be it self-loathing, sympathy or even unexpected love, depends on the circumstances of the situation and may be chosen by the attacking character’s player. If the attacker already has a positive Tie towards the wearer or negative tie towards themselves, this influence roll is also treated as a special withering counterattack that deals (Charisma) points of unsoakable Initiative damage, as the attacker's heart is shredded by the gentle soul's cry.

This charm may also be used when failing to defend against an attack, if the wearer has taken no hostile actions this combat, outside of Souls of the Faultless.

Spilling Scarlet Truths
Cost: 3m; Mins: Essence 2
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Counterattack, Uniform
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Souls of the Faultless
Betrayals of loved ones cuts deep, a double edged blade that shakes both the victim and the betrayer.

The wearer inverts wound penalties to influence rolls, her resolve and attacks granted by Innocent Oblivion. This bonus from wound penalties is considered charm-based.

Ghost-Lit Sight
Mins: Essence 1
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None

The wearer can see Dematerialized undead beings, though not other Dematerialized beings. Their social influence is capable of affecting mindless undead.

Ghost-Lit Path
Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: Mute
Duration: One Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Ghost-Lit Sight

The wearer fades away like a ghost in sunlight, becoming dematerialized until the end of the scene. Effects that allow one to see and target ghosts can see and target the wearer, even if they would not work on other dematerialized beings.
#

Ghost-Lit Sight can be mostly replicated with 'Resources 4' but the 'talking to mindless undead' is nice.

bleak hazel
#

ghost-lit path seems very cheap considering but I suppose the Belt of Shadow Walking exists

#

I would have this at E3, personally, because that's where Sids and so on start getting "go ghost"

#

but the price wildly swings around a bit

tulip folio
#

Yeah, it's Belt but with +1 WP cost and 'Look, people who drink ghost tea can see you'.

bleak hazel
#

oh yeah ghost tea exists

#

never mind

#

not that most groups are prepped with that

tulip folio
#

They're not but I kinda wanted an 'out' if the GM needs to slap me about 😛

#

Beyond the GM literally doing so

#

Likewise the first half of Ghost-Lit Sight is 'Look, you have Constant Ghost Tea, which could you just have with good resources but it saves you telling the GM Having Another Tea Break constantly'.

bleak hazel
#

I wish my constant consumption of tea allowed me to see ghosts rather than just procrastinate

tulip folio
#

Just got to do one more charm as a 'capstone'. Basicly building it as a 5 charm set where there is 2 paths of 2 and then a capstone that requires both paths completed.

#

As soon as I brainstorm a good overlap between 'Ghost Shit' and 'Innocence-based defensive tricks'

#

The logical overlap would be some sort of 'Defensively Go Ghost' but that is also dangerously close to a perfect defence and 3e no like those, even ones that can be slapped about by I Can Hit Ghosts so I should think of other things 😛

bleak hazel
#

there's the "go slightly wibbly" option from necromancy

#

She may spend five motes to partially dematerialize until the start of her next turn, inflicting a −(Essence) penalty on physical actions taken against her unless they’re enhanced by appropriate magic and allowing her to pass through porous surfaces like grated gates or barred windows.

#

whch is also E3

tulip folio
#

What's pretty cool. Where's that one from?

bleak hazel
#

but you could just Get That Spell

#

"Mortification of the Hallowed Self"

#

spell also does many other things, though, so duct taping that mode to the artifact would probably be fine

#

man, I wish I could get turnlong defences on this Sidereal but I can't even reach Celestial Necromancy

tulip folio
tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

yeah, it's a solid grab-bag

tulip folio
#

Harrowing Scythe of Azet-Ithey is funny but I'm not sure if it's good.

#

'You know MDV: Fist? Well, welcome to Social Attack: Scythe!'

#

...I wonder what 2nd circle necromancies make for good controls.

fierce star
#

corpse-engine of annihilation

#

forest of ivory razors is also neat (and would be of particular note for providing additional raw materials)

bleak hazel
#

Forest of Ivory Razors is great

fierce star
#

slumber of the wandering shade has a generally useful control

#

mortification of the hallowed self's is niche but useful

#

and then of course any sorcery spell you'd rather learn as necromancy

tulip folio
#

That's fair. I should also look at Celestial Sorcery I suppose there. XD

bleak hazel
#

Corpse-Engine has the interesting quirk of basically not having a control effect if you're a crafter because you will just annihilate the difficulty on the roll to begin with

#

I should load more sorcery into my necromancy

#

I could use a Stormwind Rider

fierce star
#

take fulminous discarnation as necromancy, be a frankenstein's monster/adam that's held together with stitches and lightning (REAL LIGHTNING)

bleak hazel
#

where's that one, alch book?

fierce star
#

yeaH

bleak hazel
#

oh wow that's good

#

the damage roll thing especially because that works post-soak

#

downside, no armour or weapons, so you have to become huge without wearing any armour at all, even Silken

#

Lunars are going to love this because they don't need armour or weapons to hit like trucks and have huge soak, so they can just keep rolling until they need to make a Decisive, which they can do with the lightning to absolutely ruin enemy hardness if they have heavy artifact on

fierce star
#

autobots book has some rela cool spells in it

tulip folio
#

Bigby's Hand Hand of the Maker is pretty cool.

tulip folio
#

...dammit, I'm resisting doing more homebrew.

fierce star
#

but if you did it, you'd have more homebrew

tulip folio
#

Kinda tempted to do up a Necromancy Initiation for more of a 'You are an exorcist who stops the undead' over just 'you make zambie hordes'

fierce star
#

ooh

#

sounds like a better use of your time than what i'm currently doing exalted wise

tulip folio
#

oh?

fierce star
#

well i've been playing monster hunter wilds, and, you know, insect glaive, that's pretty much just a direlancer user with a familiar, and given how monster hunter goes, probably solar, the question is melee supernal or athletics supernal, but either way it's not likely to be that interesting given solars are solars, but i'm not sure what other splat would work there, since there's not a lot of shapeshifting, fateworking, elemental shenanigans, being a robot, being dead, or etc involved

tulip folio
#

I mean, I've seen people play monster hunter.

#

There seems like there's a lot of 'being dead' involved for them.

prisma sun
#

How is that not deeb

tulip folio
#

More seriously: I could see Insect Glaive being like a Survival-Heavy Martial Art.

#

Get X Bonus, Get Y bonus if Familiar also here.

#

As it's not really Conventional Fighting with the lance

#

Like 'Hey, get +survival/2 to withering damage. Full survival if you've got a familiar in the same zone as the target'

tulip folio
# fierce star ooh

My thoughts is that it gets a fair bit of anti-undead in the merits you can buy. Like 'Zombies and other mindless undead are a penalty to hurt you'

#

Like a Superior version of the Talismans you can buy for resources.

#

See 'talismans that provide greater bonuses also exist but are rare and extremely difficult to create' and 'Hey, that sounds like an Initiation Specific Thing!'

# 
Non-Exalted Undead have -1 Dice to affect you.

Or something.

#

...hmm....

# 
Warding Talismans (Merit ••): The Necromancer can walk unworried through the ranks of the dead, for she is warded by the flow of Lethe's waters. She doubles 8s on rolls to resist environmental hazards based on necromancy or deathly energy, and adds her Essence to both soak and hardness against non-exalted undead and necromancy spells.
bleak hazel
fierce star
#

The thing is the elemental stuff isn't from the character, it's specifically an aspect of the weapon, and is more like

#

gamified than part of the thematics of the games, I feel like?

bleak hazel
#

the whole of Monster Hunter seems more gamified than Exalted, that's just the vibe, but they're not Solars because they do actually appear to have to fight rather than leftclick directly through the problem

#

solars are playing EDF, where endless hordes of vast creatures arrive for you to annihilate with gigantic guns

#

also if you make this a deeb, you get to actually fight the various giant monster enemies in the various splatbooks and have a good time, which beats having to make every major enemy a Lunar optimized for fighting in X form because otherwise you'll just roll them

fierce star
#

lol

#

fair

bleak hazel
#

stealing alch merits for my Sid

#

I don't even want Silken Armour on this guy at E2 because I can actually wear normal medium armour for the same soak, so I have four merit dots to burn

#

not sure what to go for, I have the traditional money and backing already, plus my artifact sword

#

Unusual Hide 4 would be mechanically optimal but I do not think this man has marble skin

tulip folio
#

Hmm...pondering a 'you generate motes this way' and wondering if it's too abusable.

#

Getting necromantic motes when you kill enemy undead (Doesn't work on your own stuff, no raising skeletons and then beating them down).

tulip folio
# 
Initiation: Exorcist's Bells

Not all who are drawn to necromancy are drawn by darkness within. The strongest tool to fight necromancy is necromancy itself and only a master of souls can act as shepherd to those seeking Lethe. One of the most powerful tools used by these necromancers are the Exorcist's bells; a set of Starmetal and Adamant bells, the original of which are thought to have been crafted for Saturn herself. They are passed from master to student, their clear tones cutting through the spells worked by slavers of the dead. One day, it is hoped, the ringing of these bells will crack the foundries of soulsteel that enslave the underworld.

Shaping Rituals

Soulsteel Shattering Tone: The necromancer is rewarded by the thankful prayers of souls she saves from cruel magic. When the Necromancer uses Countermagic against a spell cast by a hostile character, she gains the same number of necromantic motes as she removed from the affected spell. These motes do not stack (Being replaced if you use Countermagic again and would generate more motes than you currently have from this) and last until the end of the story.

Astarael's Get: When the necromancer or a character she is fighting alongside destroys a non-trivial hostile Undead character, Soulsteel Construct or uses a Spell or Charm to directly send a non-trivial character to Lethe, she gains Necromantic Motes equal to that character's Essence. An enemy battle group made up of the Undead that loses all Magnitude is treated as having essence equal to the essence of the battle group plus its size for this purpose. She can have a maximum of 20 necromantic motes gained this way and they last until used.

It's a big max pool but you need to earn them the hard way.

fierce star
#

ooh

#

that's spicy

tulip folio
fierce star
#

nice

tulip folio
#

I wanted to sorta set it against the usual 'everything necromantic links to soulsteel'

#

Still need 1 more Shaping Ritual.

#

Likely a 'you make motes during downtime' one, as most seem to have one of those.

bleak hazel
#

I would perhaps consider a reset period on the gigantic pool, just to stop the inevitable approach of "well, here comes the real fight and we've been whacking zombies for weeks now, one tap Death Ray"

#

end of story perhaps

#

you do really have to work for them though, that might be a bit punishing

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

which one's that when it's at home?

#

I actually quite like most of the necromancy spread, there's nothing that makes me go "hot damn, I'm going to use that all the time" other than the scrimshaw one, and that's just because I really like crafting

tulip folio
#

From Wanasaan Exorcist.

bleak hazel
#

oh yeah, that one is very big

#

it's interesting because most shaping ritual attribute/ability rolls seem to be assessed on the impression you're not going to massively boost them because 1 mote for one sorcerous mote in combat is a fairly poor deal, in which case that's about 4-6 motes, but for this one you can easily full excellency + willpower it and then go to bed

tulip folio
#

I'm a fan of 'It takes some work to get these' or 'You get them per-story but not likely any refreshes within that story'.

#

If that makes sense?

tulip folio
#

Takes 8 hours, not 1. So that is like...your Work Day getting them back.

#

But it's also in the alch book, when Alchs have 'Double 9s on stuff involving math' and clarity can add up to 3 non-charm dice to math and logic things.

#

So it seems like Alchs using this will get a Bigger Pool at the start of an adventure or in Notable Downtime but can't quite do the 'we are traveling and I shove my head in a bucket every day to get all my motes back'

#

(I hope my rambling is remotely coherant)

bleak hazel
#

it makes sense

#

Scrimshaw gets you 3 motes per pop assuming you want to cast your control spell a lot, which is very straightforward

tulip folio
#

It's also, iirc, very low upkeep?

bleak hazel
#

well, if you're a crafter it's trivial, and in fact you probably want to make lots of extra bone charms and hide them every.... wait, this is literally canon to Dishonored

#

whoever made them just wanted the craft XP

#

Necromancy also has a version of Drowning in Mystery

image.png
#

but it's considerably less powerful purely because getting hold of that much blood is a tiny bit more difficult than salt water

tulip folio
#

The other big thing is ti's 1/story, not 1/day.

bleak hazel
#

my Abyssal originally had Royal Crimson, because his name is Crimson, but he's only App 3 Stam 1 so I'm considering swapping to Blood-Quickened Sacrifice to combo with his other necromancy merit

tulip folio
#

Necromancer Sid: "Just a second, I need to assume my sid martial art form for extra essence before I have my blood bath."

bleak hazel
tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

since Hundred Shade Breath does 1hl to you, you can tap yourself with Sacrifice to cast HSB and instantly drop a size 3 elite BG

#

at the cost of putting yourself in -1s for the rest of the fight

#

I am not sure whether I prefer that to just taking my bath, getting 6 motes and carrying on, but it's neat

#

and technically renewable

tulip folio
#

...man, a Lunar Necromancer could do some very mean things there.

#

'Gunna bleed myself, then regrow my blood'

bleak hazel
#

"requires you to spill your blood" is luckily not really cheesable with most of the berserker charms because the blood isn't doing anything

#

there's also this

image.png
#

that's a lot of blood, though

#

I assume you don't need to drink all the blood of all six cows

tulip folio
#

So basicly 'Once per session: Eat A Human'

bleak hazel
#

that's quite handy actually because they're also mote batteries

#

1 mote anima power for all abyssals

#

basically leave a guy alive from each BG you kill, they're good regen

#

it reminds me of a post on old Abyssal resonance I quite liked

tulip folio
#

MURDER!

#

I do like that it promotes...I won't even say murderhobo behaviour but like 'Murder has Extra Incentive'

#

Like how Acts of Villainy gave Infernals more reason to ham it up/not always go for the optimal solution.

bleak hazel
#

It's a nice subversion of the traditional Hard Man Making Hard Decisions Abyssal because it's the very easy way

#

Personally I'm a fan of straight up evil overlord Abyssals but I know a lot of people play them solely in Deathknight Errant mode, so I appreciate the ease of falling off the proverbial wagon even if it does remove resonance as a concern most of the time

tulip folio
#

Yeah, doing things the nice way requires you to actively go 'And I won't get any limit back if I do this'

bleak hazel
#

I would personally maybe add a clause that says "outside combat" just because most Dusks waste ten living beings per combat round and that would remove the interesting conundrum

tulip folio
#

So there's still some bonus to going the 'fuck it, I kill the guards instead of sneaking past them or talking them down'

#

But not 'Well, there's 10 guards, I guess I'm emptying all my limit'

#

If that makes sense?

bleak hazel
#

Yeah

#

1/murder or 1/combat

tulip folio
#

I know Infernals had a provision for that with their stuff.

#

You get to recover limit for shoving guys in deathtraps or explaining your plan

#

But it doesn't matter how many dudes you shoved in the deathtrap or explained your plan to.

#

Beyond 'It might make for a good stunt'

bleak hazel
#

I left Thousand Corpse Goliath out of my initial sorcery loadout on this guy because I am probably going to have logistical difficulties raising literally thousands of zombies to build them with for a while

#

my first genuine Exalted logistical problem

tulip folio
#

Yeah, my Alch is skipping that one.

#

People tend to get weird if the Alch starts collecting quad digit corpses.

#

This isn't a tonne of motes/rather situational but that 'When you become the saltiest bitch' bonus is very shiny.

image.png
#

This one also can produce a fucking torrent of motes, if you're willing to work for it.

image.png
#

(Essence) motes, which count double if they're related to your boss' job.

#

Five Metal Tang giving you effectively 14 motes instantly for casting 'Death of Obsidian Butterflies but my version is Flying Blades'

bleak hazel
#

I had considered that one for my Sidereal who is supported by Lytek, 4-dot backing , but he doesn't have an essence score and I don't think he applies to many spells

#

FMT also applies to the little ghost sword you can summon that flies around and Defend Others you

#

I think it's in the Lunar or Deeb book

tulip folio
#

Lytek would let you instantly cast Gentle Call of Lethe.

#

Which to be fair: Fitting

bleak hazel
#

Where's that when it's at home?

tulip folio
#

Hahah, sadly in 2e. I did an update for 3e but it's one of the spells that hasn't made a showing yet despite it being pretty iconic.

#

But it's First Circle so I doubt it would be more than 15 motes max

bleak hazel
#

The ghost sword I think is another way to get some soak on your Sid

tulip folio
#

oh?

bleak hazel
#

but it does have actual willpower demands so niche at best

coral wraith
#

They're bound to Nara-O, who doesn't have stats in the book but 7 would probably be a fair bet

tulip folio
#

The 'You went to School' one has a really basic but I feel like it's really potent ritual, as long as you're All About Your Control Spell.

image.png
#

Stunt +2 motes to shape your control spell every time you do so.

bleak hazel
#

here we are

#

terrestrial circle

#

only Essence soak but it's something, and the flat parry 6 isn't useless

tulip folio
#

Pondering good merits for this homebrew necromantic initiation. The vague ideas I have are like 'Defensive effect against the dead', 'Ghosts not of the Void like you, spirits of the Void fear you' or 'You can get some evocations tied to the bells' but right now I'm kinda brainstorming what would be good for a much more...White Hat...Necromancer initiation.

bleak hazel
#

because of the way Defend Other works this is actually extremely meaty

tulip folio
# bleak hazel

...oh, so it will soak 6 successes from an attack even if it gets past.

bleak hazel
#

Downside is they can soak initiative off your little guy

tulip folio
#

'Quickly, beat up the sword!'

bleak hazel
#

and when he's crashed he'll hand them 5i and vanish

#

but it still takes a few precious swings off an alpha strike

tulip folio
#

And it gives you the ultimate defence against the Invincible Sword Princess.

#

"You're into swords too? We should be friends!"

bleak hazel
#

Your little guy is actually insane at defending you from mortals because they basically can't Overwhelm their way through it in a reasonable time

tulip folio
#

Autothonian Version: Point Defence Drone.

#

But yeah...for now I should likely try brainstorming some merits for this homebrew necromantic initiation.

#

As I'd rather not just steal the ones from the Sorcery Exorcist one. Among other things, themes here are more 'music' than 'water'. XD

bleak escarp
#

On that note, from one of the writers;

tulip folio
#

Hahahah

#

Yess

tulip folio
# 
Initiation: Exorcist's Bells

Not all who are drawn to necromancy are drawn by darkness within. The strongest tool to fight necromancy is necromancy itself and only a master of souls can act as shepherd to those seeking Lethe. One of the most powerful tools used by these necromancers are the Exorcist's bells; a set of Starmetal and Adamant bells, the original of which are thought to have been crafted for Saturn herself. They are passed from master to student, their clear tones cutting through the spells worked by slavers of the dead. One day, it is hoped, the ringing of these bells will crack the foundries of soulsteel that enslave the underworld.

Shaping Rituals

Soulsteel Shattering Tone: The necromancer is rewarded by the thankful prayers of souls she saves from cruel magic. When the Necromancer uses Countermagic against a spell cast by a hostile character, she gains a number of necromantic motes equal to her successes. These motes do not stack (Being replaced if you use Countermagic again and would generate more motes than you currently have from this) and last until the end of the story.

Astarael's Get: When the necromancer or a character she is fighting alongside destroys a non-trivial hostile Undead character, Soulsteel Construct or uses a Spell or Charm to directly send a non-trivial character to Lethe, she gains Necromantic Motes equal to that character's Essence. An enemy battle group made up of the Undead that loses all Magnitude is treated as having essence equal to the essence of the battle group plus its size for this purpose. She can have a maximum of 20 necromantic motes gained this way and they last until used.

Death Warding Talismans (Merit •••): The Necromancer can walk unworried through the ranks of the dead, for she is warded by the flow of Lethe's waters. She doubles 8s on rolls to resist environmental hazards based on necromancy or deathly energy. Against other necromantic effects she adds (Occult) dice on her opposed roll (Occult/2, Rounded Up), to a targeted static value.

This will not protect against effects that are merely enhanced by the grave (Such as a Deathknight's Soulsteel Daiklaive or a Zombie's fists) but will protect against direct usage of such power (Such as a God-Scourging Wail, or most Psyche and Shaping effects based on necromancy or Deathly Energy).

Remembrancer (Merit ••): The history of the underworld is the history of history itself. The Necromancer may use Perform or Occult instead of Lore to introduce and challenge facts about the Underworld and the Undead. In addition, she can touch objects and locations to do so with their history. She doesn't need a Lore background.

Updated with merits for that initiation. You're Necromancy Resistant, though there's an express carveout for 'No, you can't negate abyssals unless they're actively Shooting The Death Energy At You. Most shit they do is just making themselves better, gothily'

tulip folio
#

Added some psychometry to it doing some 'Look, death is all about history'

bleak hazel
#

huh, I can't use this terribly well as a Sidereal because I haven't taken the charm to attack with Strength, but I feel that an Alch could go pretty big with this one

image.png
#

celestial circle, but you're still getting a free charm success to your attacks and a cap-boosting accuracy boost

tulip folio
#

Also: My Sid would love that as they're Stamina 5, Strength 5, Dex...1 😛

bleak hazel
#

core, Incomparable Body Arsenal

#

celestial circle

#

but definitely one of the sorcery spells you can learn a hell-flavoured version of with necromancy if you are that way inclined

#

Sids actually like it more if they can make it work, because Sids count an autosuccess as one charm die for the purposes of your dice cap rather than the two that everyone else does

#

so you actually get some profit (TM) out of that even compared to regular full excellencies that you have to spend motes for

tulip folio
#

The only issue is 'Making it work with martial arts'. XD

#

Though I suppose there are some heavy armour martial arts. Just not many.

bleak hazel
#

yeah, it really doesn't do that

tulip folio
#

Or a theoretical weirdo 'not a martial artist' sid

bleak hazel
#

no SMAs for you unless you're an Essence 5 prismatic master

#

who can spend their first round of combat manually popping Prismatic Form and suddenly go super saiyan as all the indefinite buffs their armour suppresses but doesn't remove come back

raw edge
#

Bribe your storyteller to rubber-stamp "this magic armour is a lighter category of armour" and "doesn't count as armour for MA compatibility" Evocations

bleak hazel
#

sadly bribing the ST with takeaway is a Getimian charm

#

it would be nice if the Greater Hearthstone that gets you lighter armour didn't completely suck for its primary purpose, though

tulip folio
#

...dammit, I realized I had a fun idea for a Raksha charm right after I decided to stop working on them.

coral wraith
bleak hazel
#

interesting move here in Sid Melee that makes shields very good indeed

image.png
tulip folio
# 
Red Shoe Waltz
Cost: —; Mins: Essence 1
Type: Permanent
Keywords: Uniform
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None
The Raksha can use (Appearance + [Brawl or Performance]) to make control rolls for a grapple, gaining appearance bonus dice for having a higher appearance than the grappled target.
chilly sluice
#

That's fun

tulip folio
#

The name comes from a Danish Fairy Tale about a girl who wears coloured shoes to church, so an evil fey/satan curses her dance until she dies. Luckily she becomes a good girl and the end so an angel turns up to KILL HER so she'll go to heaven.

bleak hazel
#

so 3 motes for the stance, 2 motes to flurry a full defence with an attack and then 2 motes to negate the flurry penalty on the attack with Meditation on Violence

#

and then if you're in melee form your universal parry penalty negator adds 1 parry, so with Ways of Exaltation at Essence 3 you pay 1 mote to max your parry out at 13 against every attack

#

14 if you're on a horse, although that does feel slightly like cheating

#

beating people's head in with a shield is surprisingly effective considering it removes the only damage penalty

#

I suppose you could dual-wield shields and just say you have big armoured gloves

coral wraith
#

I don't think you're gonna need Parry that high lol

tulip folio
coral wraith
#

I'd swap their costs and that's it probably

#

Warding seems meh for 3 dots, out and out Psychometry is quite influential for just 2

tulip folio
#

Fair. I wanted it to be Relatively Limited Psychometry, so it's still within 'Introduce a fact', as that's something normal fact introducing can do.

#

But you get what is Possibly A Better Stat for it.

coral wraith
#

oh, that's true

#

Hm

#

2 could also be fine there, then?

tulip folio
#

Perhaps. Could also move it to a more 'actually does psychometry' where you don't need to define the answer yourself. XD

#

I'm sure a world of darkness book has some good white wolf wording for that

coral wraith
#

Lol, quite likely

bleak hazel
#

by moving his parry boost costs from his defence excellencies to his flurry penalty negation he can apply the thing that regens a mote for attack roll 10s up to the limit of motes spent on the attack and get a bit of a refund

coral wraith
#

lmao, fair enough

tulip folio
coral wraith
#

What already has it?

tulip folio
#

Solars

#

And it's essence 3 and like 4 charms deep into investigation.

#

This shit is like a one dot merit in world of darkness. XD

#

A nWoD psychic is better at this shit than a solar.

coral wraith
#

okay but you could just say fuck solars. that's fine too.

upper stratus
#

old sorrows reminiscence sidereals charm

tulip folio
#

...man, exalted really prices Psychometry highly.

coral wraith
#

Old Sorrows is a lot more comprehensive than typical psychometry, to be fair

tulip folio
#

Yeah, while I'm sorta going more for a sorta 'vague flashes and clues' more than 'Full play by play'.

#

...here's an odd pondering.

#

How do you do a big ritual spell with an instant effect?

#

Sorcerous workings are for changing stuff

#

But not really 'one and done, effect gone immediately'

raw edge
#

Architect's have Forgotten Keepsake Inquisition, which costs 15m 1wp to roll to identify an object's owner and get a hint

prisma sun
#

You be a deeb

tulip folio
#

...right so I should give up on trying to do this as an initiation merit as it seems like this is 'must be a charm'

prisma sun
#

But yeah, instant effects all seem to be spells or charms

tulip folio
#

As I was going 'maybe I can set this up as you get sorcerous workings related to that easier'

#

And then I went 'Wait, no. That doesn't work with the exp/refund system as it's an instant effect'

#

As either you'd never get the exp back (And no one would do it) or you'd instantly get it back.

#

And a charm means that only exalts, not mortal sorcerers can interact with it...hmm...

raw edge
#

I thought experience refunds got held in escrow until the end of the story? (I cannot remember where I got that idea and it's my bedtime so I'm gonna drop it here and let it be eviscerated while I dream)

tulip folio
#

...that's fair. So it would be 1-8 exp gone until end of story, which is...more feasible.

#

...actually...lets just do this a damn simple way.

# 
Remembrancer (Merit •••): The history of the underworld is the history of history itself. Within death there is no future but all pasts may be known.

The Necromancer gains the Mirror of Passing Ivory Circle spell, treating it as an additional Control Spell.

And then I just Invent A Necromancer Spell that lets you see the past like I wanted. XD

#

Vague Ponderings:

Mirror of Passing

Using Necromancy's links ties to history and the past to get a good view of an event of said history.

Ritual Speed. The further back you wanna go, the further into death you need to be. 

You wanna see within the last week? Yeah, sure. You can do that In Creation.
The last year? You'll need to be in a Shadowland.
The last decade? The Underworld or an Abyssal Manse.
The Great Contagion or later? The Labyrinth.
Further back than that? The Tombs of the Neverborn.

Doesn't give you a full view, gives flashes and hints. You get more info if you have more info to work with or objects linked to it. Aka: You get enough to be useful but not enough to instantly screw over a GM's plot.
tulip folio
#

That seem like an interesting Ivory circle spell?

tulip folio
#

...do you think this is too mean to Sidereals?

# 
Viewed through an underworld mirror, visions provided by this spell show the truth behind Resplendent Destinies, though it does not protect from Arcane Fate and thus the viewer is no more likely to remember a Sidereal this way than they normally would.
prisma sun
#

Ehhhh

#

I think you should just roll as normal

#

Automatic wins feel pretty cheap

tulip folio
#

The intent was they got the 'Outside of Fate' effect there since they're viewing the underworld's version.

#

...I'd also need to check what the roll for seeing through a Resplendent destiny IS if you're scrying someone.

prisma sun
velvet raft
#

I feel like auto-bypassing the resplendent destiny without being any better at remembering the sid is going to cause humorous memory holes

#

Which might be a feature

tulip folio
velvet raft
#

Better yet: "the king got stabbed! Did ... did somebody do the stabbing? I can't remember anybody who did the stabbing. I think the king was ontologically stabbed"

tulip folio
prisma sun
#

Yeah

tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

Resplendent destinies are basically ironclad, the only thing that gets to unilaterally blow through them is Eye of the Unconquered Sun

#

3e has generally moved away from "Sidereals get fundamentally owned by the things they're meant to be dealing with as a profession"

velvet raft
#

I do think it would be funny if bypassing a resplendent destiny leaves you with, if anything, less information

#

Even for Eye of the Unconquered Sun

bleak hazel
#

I do think this is Shadow Circle, as with most of the actual "see the past" charms

velvet raft
#

Remind me, Shadow is Terrestrial-equivalent?

#

Or higher?

tulip folio
#

...shadow seems a bit far...

velvet raft
#

Oh higher

bleak hazel
#

Shadow is Essence 3, celestial necromancy

velvet raft
#

Yeah that seems fair

#

I don't think something like this should be within reach of anyone lower than a celestial

tulip folio
#

And also means that I can't really make it work with the merit...

bleak hazel
#

Sids get their "pick up an object, see its history" charm there so they can go Alas Poor Yorick

velvet raft
#

You could add other fun shadow-appropriate stuff to it?

tulip folio
#

...I might just scrap the idea then.

velvet raft
#

Versatility

tulip folio
#

The issue is that a merit for an initiation can't really refer to something you can't do when you've initiated

bleak hazel
#

Solar and Sid investigation are, respectively, pretty cracked and on the exalt meant to be best at infowar, so I would probably not balance around their high essence charms in deebzone

#

also I swear this was Celestial Circle Sorcery already

velvet raft
#

(What is it, Ivory -> Shadow -> Labyrinth?)

bleak hazel
#

don't have the book in the train station but I'm sure Shades of the Past is there somewhere

bleak hazel
#

not particularly catchy

tulip folio
#

I liked Iron

#

Why did they change the name, I wonder

#

But yeah...I guess I'll scrap this idea.

#

Kinda funny how a 1 dot merit in wod is too much for most exalts. XD

prisma sun
#

I think psychometry is fine you just shouldn't tack on the anti sid clause

#

"You are looking at a painting, not the real being. You cannot surmise their essence from the visions unless it is visibly displayed "

tulip folio
#

Yeah but this was supposed to be Ivory tier since its for an initiation merit.

#

So it needs scrapping anyway

velvet raft
#

Like I get Shadow into Void

#

What's up with Ivory into Shadow?

tulip folio
#

I guess I'll need to brainstorm a new thing or something.

fierce star
#

Honestly, going off of what Thaumaturgy is capable of, a two or three dot merit that basically copies the tea reading thaumaturgy ritual but slightly different could work

#

this but for the past, giving you ideas for what transpired in the past instea dof what might happen in the future

image.png image.png
velvet raft
#

I do feel thaumaturgy is a bit undertuned for Exalts

#

Or at least that there should be charm trees for taking it to greater heights

bleak hazel
#

I think the general idea is that that's what sorcery is, but the given thaumaturgies are so weak they're not even particularly interesting for NPCs

velvet raft
#

They make sense as a setting detail

#

Like, I can see why a thaumaturge would be valued in a village of a hundred people

#

But come on, if this is a mortal skill, and Exalts are specifically good at taking mortal skills to impossible heights

#

Where's the cool stuff

fierce star
#

ex2 thaumaturgy was actually pretty decent and worth investing in for occult-focused exalts, but also at the same time the relationship between thaumaturgy and sorcery was inverted

#

where a mortal needed a spark of something greater to actually learn sorcery, but any mortal could just pick up thaumaturgy with study and dedication

velvet raft
#

Yeah I don't really understand why that was changed

#

to be tbh it feels like a very early-3e sort of change

fierce star
#

Yeah

bleak hazel
#

What weapons have the shield tag? Only seems to be the regular shield in the core book but there has to be some others somewhere

fierce star
#

Shield, and for artifacts thunderbolt shield and razor parasol

#

I think that's it

#

Maybe one of the weird ma weapons that only show up in ma charmset writeups

#

It's rare because the tag sucks though lol, unless you can get it with no damage penalty

quiet garnet
#

crying Once more hoping to one day play Exalted 3E (preferably Lunar, Abyssals, or Alchemist)

velvet raft
#

I’d this tbh but for my Solar addiction

bleak hazel
#

Costs 4 motes to make the flurry + cancel the penalty but ooh, 2 non-charm defence

fierce star
#

That is spicy

bleak hazel
#

I am wondering if I can make a Sid who mote reactors hard enough to do that every round w/ full excellencies

#

I think I can manage that, adding reflexive aim/clash boosting/counterattacks definitely puts me mote negative

quiet garnet
velvet raft
#

3e does at least seem friendlier to mixed splats

tulip folio
# 
Mirror Of Passing (Ivory Circle)
Cost: Ritual, 2wp
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant

The Necromancer lets a drop of blood fall upon a Claude glass, where it spreads a ripple like a stone dropped into a perfectly still lake.

The Underworld's relationship with time is uneven, dependent on the Calendar of Setesh to have a present or future. Past, however, is something the underworld is naturally full of, as it constantly flows from creation into death. Making use of this, the Necromancer calls upon visions of the past.

These visions are fragmented and often require interpretation. Attempting to learn about a murder may focus on the murder weapon, showing where it has been hidden. Alternatively, it may give fragments of the killer's anima banner and caste mark. While it may not provide a perfect view, it always provides an immediately and highly useful clue about events within the last month.

Going deeper into death provides more clarity and the ability to view further into the past. Within a Shadowland, one can learn about events within the last decade. Within the underworld or an Abyssal Manse, one can draw visions from up to a century ago. Should one risk the Labyrinth, they could call visions all the way back to the Great Contagion. Some say that if the necromancer was to risk Oblivion itself within the Tombs of the Neverborn, they could watch the crafting of creation itself.

The further back one views, the clearer the visions are. While events that have recently happened are fragmentary, events from years or decades ago are much clearer and those centuries ago are so clear as to almost be there in person, allowing investigation of events within those visions.

Control: Mastery of the underworld's past allows the Necromancer to hold on deeply to her own, gaining perfect memory. Against effects that would alter her memories, she adds (Occult) dice on her opposed roll or (Occult/2, Rounded Up), to a targeted static value.

Does this redo seem okay for Ivory Tier? It's not a full 'You see everything' like the Solar/Sid charm but it's a 'GET A CLUE' button (With bigger, clearer info the more you made casting the ritual an adventure in and of itself)

velvet raft
#

I just need to play a Dawn combat monster once and then I will be sated

tulip folio
#

Added a control to the spell.

#

...though now that I'm thinking about it: Does anyone have an exalted probability calculator? I kinda want to calculate something but stuff like 'double 9s/8s' makes this complicated.

#

Anydiced it.

#

A 10 pool Alch (So very good but not maxed out as no spec or transpussient) with their 'better memory' permanent charm has a 40% chance to punch through Arcane Fate.

#

Anydice dies if I try to get it to handle exalted dicepools past 10 dice with my current code though.

fierce star
#

hmm, I think anydice is our best bet, I'm not seeing anything else on a quick google

bleak escarp
tulip folio
#

Okay, so in things that have happened to my poor alch and the game hasn't even formally started yet: She got Bullied by her own Lower Soul. Or Former Lower Soul? It's complicated.

bleak hazel
tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

there's a good 3e dice roller but it doesn't do probability, so you'd have to just roll 'em a hundred times or so and see what you get

#

also not bad, what does that charm do?

tulip folio
#

Gives Double 9s on anything related to memory, which adds a good bit to the average.

bleak hazel
#

yeah, 6 success average will manage it a fair number of times

#

the main thing is that if you're playing Arcane Fate as-written it happens every time they leave the room so to maintain good relations with a Sidereal you need to be able to pass that check fairly reliably

tulip folio
#

Yeah. You'd want to make sure you've got the dice for excellencies at all times as without it, you're playing with a weighted coin flip and it ain't weighted your way.

bleak hazel
#

you can also get a solid bonus for having relevant intimacies so clearly the correct answer is to ask the Sidereal out on a date or something before you forget they exist

tulip folio
#

...I'm also laughing at the mental image of being able to remember 40% of sidereals when they leave the room.

#

'Well, there were 10 people here and I know 4 of them were sidereals but damned if I can work out who the other 6 were.'

bleak hazel
#

"I know Chejop, but who's this Kejak fellow" is the other alternative

tulip folio
#

I think the biggest trick Alchs have against Arcane Fate is their 'Best Hug' charm.

#

It lets them comfort people to shed Psyche or Mind-Affecting Shaping effects.

#

As long as they can beat the essence of the person who put it on with Appearance + Presence.

#

Like I'm not even kidding about 'hug'.

#

And like most Alch things, it's cheaper when used on mortals.

#

Alchs give Great Hugs, gets rid of mind control and derangements.

#

That said: Alchs also have some of the nastiest mind control.

#

There's a reason the Personality Overide Spike exists.

# 
Backdoor Access Infiltration (3xp, Autochthonic Access Codes) (+4m): The Alchemical can pay a fourmote surcharge to assume control of a character who’s subject to a Psyche effect that the Alchemical used
on him or a Derangement she’s inflicted.

Or 'Traumatize a guy enough to let you Remote Control him'

#

Or 'Hey, I see you have intimacies that go against Your Job. How about you Don't Any More.'

image.png
bleak hazel
#

Sids skip the hassle and just Assume Direct Control using God Ways

#

still not entirely sure "absolutely max out join battle, immediately God Ways" isn't a decent play

tulip folio
tulip folio
bleak hazel
#

I'm trying to figure out how many "you watch the video back" scenes actually produce more than one lead in TTRPGs but I think it's a heavily dependent on the GM

#

I think in most cases it's probably as good

bleak hazel
#

At Essence 3 at least you can average 10.8 sx if you are willing to full excellency + willpower a base pool of 10z so if you really all in it's 11.8 for 3wp total

#

I suppose it's an option if you're mostly noncombat and someone huge and scary shows up, but it's hard to know a sidereal martial art and get enough initiative to do this without being fairly choppy

tulip folio
#

Just gotta wait for the Big Dumb Guy to turn up, with his big stats and mediocre resolve 😛

bleak hazel
#

There's a (fairly expensive) stab-you-in-the-guile move in Sid Melee, too

#

most importantly it bypasses armour entirely so if you have any cheap withering damage boosters you can really pour it on

#

Post-soak is a bit harder to get, although Endings Sidereals have a ton of overwhelming anyway so they don't care as much

#

at least my endings builds tend to mostly focus on overwhelming and post-soak, if I happen to roll more than my overwhelming damage that's a bonus

tulip folio
raw edge
#

An Alchemical's Psyche-Probing Scan submodule of their Metaphysical Cross-Phase Scanner detects Shaping effects, so it would detect the influence of Arcane Fate, right? And they might be on basically everybody around you. Fun!

tulip folio
#

And just spiral into complete paranoia

raw edge
tulip folio
#

It couldn't handle me pushing it to 15 dice with just Normal Exalted Dice System

raw edge
#

Huh, how were you modelling them? For just doubles and reroll all of a number, arbitrary dice should be fine https://anydice.com/program/3bd09

AnyDice

AnyDice is an advanced dice probability calculator, available online. It is created with roleplaying games in mind.

#

Dice tricks that require examination of the full results like "roll another for every 10" or "reroll up to 3 failed dice" etc are way beyond me though

tulip folio
#

...yeah, you did that a lot better than the one I was using. I had loops and using the full value of dice, not just successes.

#

Okay a Full Excellency Alch with the Memory Charm but no other fancy tricks has a 94% chance to remember Sids

#

And a maximized bonus but no motes spent alch has a 83% chance (Though that requires getting up there in essence even if you're not spending any motes on it).

raw edge
#

Increased Clarity effectively reduces the Arcane Fate difficulty. gives you non-Charm dice. You need Clarified Data Assimilator to turn them into non-Charm successes

tulip folio
#

Oh yeah, clarity would make it a lot easier, right.

bleak hazel
#

Arcane Fate isn't necessary associated with Sids doing some xianxia bullshit as opposed to just living life, so even if you hugged one of them better they probably don't notice that they now have a normal level of memory of that guy who ordered a beer last month rather than zero memory

tulip folio
#

Oh yeah, they'd have the 'no context for what's going on' issue that makes it not really a silver bullet.

tulip folio
# raw edge Increased Clarity ~~effectively reduces the Arcane Fate difficulty.~~ gives you ...

As an aside: I find it funny that Dawns can go 'I can intimidate the immune to all mental effects' but since clarity just Downgrades The Intimacy so many times, a dawn has the issue that he can put as many 'I'm scared of the yellow fellow' as he wants, they just all get put in 'But it's not logical' box until they go low-clarity and suddenly have a tonne of 'Wait, that dawn was scary!'

bleak hazel
#

On a side note, I love the Sid Integrity version of their psyche effect defeater because it's perfect for a spy movie "ah fuck, they got me" moment

bleak hazel
raw edge
#

Another Alchemical Arcane Fate resistance booster could be Thermionic Orthodoxy Array for the cost of 5m per hour. Its submodule Axiomatic Regulator provides +1 non-charm success per installed Transpuissant Intelligence Upgrade to resist Shaping effects
Ontological Anchor Assembly + Reality Stabilization Matrix submodule can give you automatic successes to counter shaping effects. Possibly even non-charm. It's written weirdly

bleak hazel
#

I think this may just be trying to fit an E3 button into an E1 box unless you reinterpret the "I scry the past of whatever" to be something other than movie Visioncamera

tulip folio
#

I think the issue is it really doesn't feel like an E3 thing.

#

Or at least, not a Celestial Sorcery Miraculous Thing.

#

This is like 'The shit Harry Houdini busted up, except it worked'. XD

bleak hazel
#

It's time fuckery, time fuckery is expensive as hell in Exalted

#

There's a reason it's an entire Sidereal Martial Art

#

(although IIRC the reason that exists is mostly because the devs really wanted to give Sidereals Ki Rata)

tulip folio
#

My personal thoughts is that the corebook put 'Be able to recreate a scene mentally' at E3 and it was a mistake but they can't give it to Sids cheaper than Solars got it so they had to have it at E3 too. XD

bleak hazel
#

I honestly think it's fairly priced given how many plots it solves in one shot

#

Solar Investigation is renowned for its ability to make any criminal case profoundly boring because it just hands you all the information

#

although at least Judge's Ear Technique is more expensive now

tulip folio
#

I guess I'll just scrap this spell then.

#

It's amusing that 'get a look at a likely future' is something mortals can do with Thaumaturgy but 'Unclear visions of the past' is Celestial Circle Sorcery. XD

bleak hazel
#

Flawless lie and half truth detector unless your target has the Sidereal ability to selectively edit their own memories so they are never knowingly lying

#

(thank you discord for waiting five straight minutes to post that so it makes no sense given where it is in the chat )

tulip folio
#

...oh, judges ear.

#

I got real confused

bleak hazel
#

"can't reveal any information someone has taken effort to hide"

tulip folio
#

...eh, that sorta ends up feeling kinda bad for a Ritual Spell. As it means you can't learn anything that 'A solid lore roll' couldn't already pick up.

#

Like I'm not sure someone's going all to the Labyrinth to get halted by 'Sorry, a guy put it under a basket so you auto-fail'

bleak hazel
#

so it won't show you the hidden murder weapon or the killer's face behind their bandana, but you can get the exact details of a meeting from last month

bleak hazel
#

and if you're going to the labyrinth it kind of can't have one

tulip folio
#

...dammit, it's supposed to require a link. Either being at the site or an object or such. XD

#

That one is on me.

bleak hazel
#

That was one of the other restrictions I was going to suggest, yes

#

I think without that it becomes my favourite fictional past-viewing magic trick, "I view somewhere else in the world as of 0.1 seconds ago, privacy isn't real"

tulip folio
# 
Receiving a vision within Creation, a Shadowland or the Underworld requires a link to the target of the vision. A lock of hair, a possession or being physically located at the place of the vision. Within the Labyrinth or deeper, you instead only require a way to clearly identify the event, such as 'The Binding of Malfeas' or 'The Dowager getting piledrivered through the Calendar of Setesh by the Twin Monarchs', though traveling that deep is an adventure on its own.
#

That help?

bleak hazel
#

Significantly, although I might drop the in-creation time limit to a week so that it's reasonably plausible for the GM to put events out of easy scrying range in order to hold a plot together

tulip folio
#

Fair

bleak hazel
#

I can attest that the E1 "track literally anyone with no trace, from any time up to essence months ago" charm from Sids is insanely good at removing problems

tulip folio
#

The intended use case is supposed to be very 'Hey, we want to uncover a big historical event. Well, I guess we're going on a Death Trip to be able to See Back That Far'

bleak hazel
#

I still don't like it very much at Ivory but I concede that "look in my evil scrying mirror for where I left my evil keys" is something that mortal and Deeb sorcerors should be able to do

#

"but sir, you need your evil keys to get into your evil office where the mirror is"

tulip folio
#

...and somehow I forgot an existing spell existed.

# 
Shadows of the Ancient Past
Cost: 10sm, 2wp
Keywords: None
Duration: One scene
The sorcerer calls up the lingering echoes of the past to reenact themselves before her. The sorcerer may choose a specific time in the past she wishes to view, such as “One hundred years ago, on the first day of Ascending Air,” or a subjective time that relates to something in the scene, such as “When this corpse died.” The spell creates translucent, insubstantial illusions that fill the room or area and display the events of the specified point in time. The sorcerer may mentally pause the action for detailed examination with Awareness or Investigation actions, or accelerate the flow of time within the illusion
so that up to an entire day passes by in the space ofthe scene. Attempting to view events from more than five centuries ago call only vague, indistinguishable images that rarely convey useful details. The events of the recent present—within the past year or so—have yet to form substantial echoes, providing only the barest of imagery conjured.

A sorcerer who knows Shadows of the Ancient Past as her control spell may mentally record all illusions conjured by any casting of this spell. She may cause them to reappear at a later point at any time by taking a shape sorcery action at no cost. 

Distortion (Goal Number: 5): Distorting this spell allows the opposing sorcerer to falsify the illusions for the duration of the spell, warping and obfuscating the truth. While she cannot totally eliminate the information the casting sorcerer is attempting to discern, she may introduce all manner of contradictory evidence, red herrings, or misleading images in an attempt to throw him off the trail.

I forgot this was in the corebook.

#

As basicly 'much more controllable, reliable version of this spell'

#

Though man 'Not within the past year and not more than 500 years' makes this celestial-level spell really fucking narrow and I guess that's why I didn't remember it.

#

'It can't be anything from the previous ages and it can't be anything that happened within a reasonable timeframe either'.

bleak hazel
#

Yeah, half the reason I thought yours was a bit much was because the existing Celestial scrying was neat but quite limited

tulip folio
#

I'll admit, I'm not sure the usecase for Shadows of the Ancient Past. As it's kinda...excluding the times you'd want to use it for, mostly.

#

Like 'when this corpse died', one of the actual examples likely fails more often than not

bleak hazel
#

I think it's meant to be "please don't trivialize our investigation plots, also don't reveal the first age"

#

The former is a more urgent problem for yours, since going on a giant labyrinth doom quest to discover the arcane secrets of the forgotten dead is already cool

tulip folio
#

Yeah. Maybe I should set a minimum timeframe to view things. As it's supposed to be more of like...the purpose for it is to be more like a Super Historian.

#

Than a Super Detective.

#

If that makes sense?

bleak hazel
#

Yeah, that's much less powerful and easier to make function

#

Spider Google does a lot of that and it's an E1 charm with no prereqs, albeit a very good one that is the cornerstone of Sidereal information war bullshit

tulip folio
#

Vague Pondering:

#

Set a minimum timeframe but also: If you have it as a control spell, you can Establish Facts and Contest Facts about things you historied with a bonus.

#

'That's not right, I have seen the history and that's not how it went'

bleak hazel
#

I like that

#

Considering writing a 3e version of Border of Kaleidoscopic Logic Style

#

this would not be a good idea but I have a really fun elder Sid character concept for it

velvet raft
#

Randomly give it old-school scripture rules :D

#

"But those aren't in the game anymore"
"They are now"

#

definitely not motivated by how much I love BoKL's scripture in particular

#

"So much for freedom."

bleak hazel
#

I'm definitely bending the existing martial arts formatting to have the lines of the sutra with the charms

velvet raft
#

This is good

#

I still think it's extremely tragic how the sutras no longer correspond to conceptually related charms

#

It made them these extremely strange, unique art objects

bleak hazel
#

This is also a style that allowed you to make a fork of your soul and possess someone with it permanently before you even reached the capstones so 3e-ifying it is a little tricky, but the Intimacy system really helps

#

Still wish I could ban Solars from using the second half though, because the student and elder sutras are conceptually distinct in a way that few other SMAs were

#

Wait, basically all of these moves are "cool punch buff -> Sidereal Vision Quest rider", I can go fairly ham on the Enlightenment

#

and that allows a Sid-Get martial arts duel to be genuinely incomprehensible to people who have not sat through the preceding lifetime of xianxia nonsense, which appeals greatly to me

velvet raft
#

Oh wait yeah enlightenment

#

I should have read the post directly below that one

#

But yeah a solar doing a rough approximation of BoKL should be throwing punches that mess with the mind and senses a bit, not throwing knife hands that give someone permanent global aphasia but also make them an artistic genius

bleak hazel
#

yeah, Enlightenment is a good way to split this stuff, I just wish it was used slightly more aggressively

#

and maybe just stick the enlightenment keyword on some of the capstone charms directly like how certain Evocations are Resonant Only

wise ocean
bleak hazel
#

Getimians still get to play with it but honestly in that case fair enough, the Dr Strange martial arts duel is a perfectly good reason for them to also get the weird ones

upper stratus
#

Enlightenment: only characters with enlightenment can access this charm wonk

bleak hazel
#

wait I can just do that can't I

#

neat

#

also thanks

bleak hazel
#

wuxia vs xianxia, kind of

fierce star
#

SMAs really key into that 'I took a load of strange pills and meditated on the corpse of a magic frog for twenty years straight so now my power level is greater than all of ancient china, except maybe not, maybe I'm just high, except actually no, I am that strong'

#

the ideal SMA is equal parts kung fu wizard, magic acid trip, and makes you question the foundations of reality

#

(therefore quicksilver hand of dreams is the best SMA)

#

(at least thematically, we do not talk about it's ex2 mechanics)

tulip folio
# bleak hazel I like that 
Mirror Of Passing (Ivory Circle)
Cost: Ritual, 2wp
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant

The Necromancer lets a drop of blood fall upon a Claude glass, where it spreads a ripple like a stone dropped into a perfectly still lake.

The Underworld's relationship with time is uneven, dependent on the Calendar of Setesh to have a present or future. Past, however, is something the underworld is naturally full of, as it constantly flows from creation into death. Making use of this, the Necromancer calls upon visions of the past.

These visions are fragmented and often require interpretation. Attempting to learn about one army betraying another might give a view of a signet ring, or a soldier in the embrace of an unknown Raksha. While it may not provide a perfect view, it always provides an immediately useful clue, if only in the sense of being a clear indication on what would be a useful next step to uncover the truth.

Going deeper into death provides more clarity and the ability to view further into the past. Within Creation, one can see events within the past year. Within a Shadowland or near a Soulsteel Vein, one can learn about events within the last decade. Within the underworld, the Endless Smoke or an Abyssal Manse, one can draw visions from up to a century ago. Should one risk the Labyrinth or a Blight Zone, they could call visions all the way back to the Great Contagion. Some say that if the necromancer was to risk Oblivion itself within the Tombs of the Neverborn, they could watch the crafting of creation itself.

The further back one views, the clearer and more useful the visions are. Events within the last month are still the realm of the living and so fragmentary as to be useless. However, events from years or decades ago are much clearer and those centuries ago are so clear as to almost be there in person, allowing investigation of events within those visions.

Receiving a vision within Creation, a Shadowland, a Soulsteel Vein the Endless Smoke or the Underworld requires a link to the target of the vision. A lock of hair, a possession or being physically located at the place of the vision. Within the Labyrinth, a Blight Zone or deeper, you instead only require a way to clearly identify the event, such as 'The Binding of Malfeas' or 'The Dowager getting piledrivered through the Calendar of Setesh by the Twin Monarchs', though traveling that deep is an adventure on its own.

Control: This mastery over the history of death gives the necromancer an uncanny insight towards history itself. The Necromancer adds +(Occult) Dice to Introduce or Challenge facts related to the subject of her most recent casting of this spell. She does not need a Lore Background for this.

Did a rewrite. Can't see shit within the past month so it's more for 'Investigating long-term stuff' than 'solving every mystery instantly' but making it your control spell lets you go 'I am king shit at this specific topic until I cast it again'.

#

So if you research the Creation of a Manse, for a while you'll get to go 'I know about a hidden passage in this manse' super well.

#

It's less 'know everything' and more pressing the 'get a clue, or at least info on where to find a clue' button.

fierce star
#

Oooh, nice

bleak hazel
#

you do need to say "+(Occult) dice"

#

otherwise I like it

tulip folio
# bleak hazel you do need to say "+(Occult) *dice*"

Ah, yeah. Thanks. I'm really happy I got to keep the 'The more of An Actual Adventure you make this, the bigger the effect of the spell'. Helps push the potential power without making it something you'd see terrestials and mortal sorcerers doing out of sheer 'You ain't coming back if you try'. XD

tulip folio
#

Hmm...gotta work out One More Shaping Ritual for this initiation.

Likely one that works in downtime, as the others are very 'earn in-game'

fierce star
#

morality play: necromancy is bad mmkay edition

bleak hazel
#

have gotten stuck making this sidereal and ended up leaving fifty different things I need to get on the way from E1 to E3

#

luckily this is relatively doable

fierce star
#

Hmm. A 3 dot merit can unlock two two-dot merits, and a 5 dot merit can unlock two four-dot merits; would a four dot merit unlocking a three dot merit (but only for those resonant with jade) be too much, you think?

#

(in thise an artifact unlocking a three dot familiar)

velvet raft
#

I think manse is kinda a special case

#

In that Demesne gets dramatically better if you get it with Manse, to the point where it would be worth it even without the hearthstone

#

So I guess yeah, a four dot merit granting a three dot familiar with upgrades would be in line

bleak hazel
#

Manse is an odd one honestly, I've never seen someone just take Demesne

#

even me, and I love crafting and have just made a character who is explicitly able to build giant fuckoff manses, so I could concievably save XP expenditure on my Manse

#

I'm just planning to go conquer/buy/generally acquire a demesne normally

#

Personally I think that familiars/allies/retainers etc. should remain in their own "pay full cost at least" section, but that's because of the classic "hang on a minute, I can buy new character sheets with a tiny fraction of my character sheet" thing, so it would depend heavily on what the familiar did

#

pattern spiders and tyrant lizards are both technically three-dot familiars but I look slightly more closely at someone trying to bring the latter to a game I'm running

fierce star
#

Well, the intent would be a small elemental spirit that is capable of harrying enemies but not doing real damage to them, is material by default but can dematerialize temporarily, and explicitly exists to be used with the evocations of the artifact

bleak hazel
#

oh then you're fine then, just budget it as part of the artifact

#

4 dot artifact is that kind of zone, because this is not "sword that is gooder at swording" territory but it's also not 5-dot level Bignumbers

fierce star
#

Yeah since the whole 'monster hunter should be deebs' conversation I've been pondering on if I wanted to like, further extract insect glaive into exalted instead of just 'take a longfang, take a familiar'

bleak hazel
#

(5-dots need GM approval at chargen and honestly should probably need GM approval at any point because all published ones are wild, whereas 4-dots are just slightly weirder 3-dots, maybe with an extra button or two)

bleak hazel
#

although I know basically zero things about monster hunter so I can't help with the specifics

fierce star
#

In the abstract it's a game about ecology and how mankind has to help maintain the ecological balance when nature itself is full of hyper evolved superweapons made by an ancient race superpredators that start at the size of a package van and go up from tehre

#

in the specific, insect glaive is all about utilizing aerial mobility and the kinsect, which is basically a bug familiar, to collect 'essences' from the monsters to engage a supermode where all your stuff gets a lot better movement and attack and defense

bleak hazel
#

at least one friend has asked me to get into the new one with them but I am currently not in the position where I can casually throw new-game money around so I'll have to wait a bit

fierce star
#

Like I imagine the familiar for this artifact would have some out of combat utility, but it would be similar utility to something like a raiton or whatever

#

you do have a flying thing that can speak to you, that's generally useful

bleak hazel
#

as long as you have to actually get and use one of the evocations to send bugfriend on errands that seems pretty plausible

#

there's a mace in one of the books that contains an imprisoned sorceror king and his palace, you can chat to him and bargain for access to his library

fierce star
#

legit

#

... damnit

#

I went looking through older editions for elementals that were insect themed and reminded myself about mercury ants

velvet raft
#

The rolls of divinity in 2E are fantastic

#

Just for like

#

Having stuff

bleak hazel
#

the Sufficient Velocity exalted thread has a ton of homebrew-2e stuff that I cannot do a direct rules port of to 3e without basically rewriting the whole thing myself, but it's great if you want Even More First Circles

#

so many great demons

velvet raft
#

Does 3e have wood spider stats?

#

I think no but

bleak hazel
#

I only remember the usual Anhules

tulip folio
#

...oh right, 'send people to lethe' is a sid charm. Shouldn't step on that with a merit. I had been pondering a third merit for this initiation that was like:

Grant Rest (Merit ••): As an action, you can send a Trivial, Willing or Incapacitated undead within short range to Lethe. Destroyed undead that will reform are considered Incapacitated for this purpose, unless protected by magic (Such as the bindings of deathlords or the link of a familiar). You can also grant rest to corpses this way, guaranteeing they will not rise as a ghost.

So I'll ponder a different 'Necromancer who is anti-zombie hordes' trick. XD

velvet raft
#

Is necromancy still inherently evil in 3e? I haven't read any of the new fluff

next delta
#

The designers like to make a joke something along the lines of "Nothing in Exalted is purely evil, except the deathlords"

tulip folio
tulip folio
#

It's a flaw in creation, a failure of the design, like the Underworld itself.

#

But much like how the Underworld itself is not inherently evil, neither is necromancy.

#

Even back in 2e it had a lot of non-malevolent uses.

#

Gentle Call of Lethe was all about helping people pass on peacefully, and necromancy was the way to help Nephracks recover from the madness of oblivion.

tulip folio
#

How do Lunars do in 3e if they're trying to Keep Seeming Human? I know in 2e they were very 'Look, if I'm not in animal form I'm not that great'.

#

Pondering a character but 'Turning into animals for combat' isn't really her thing, even if a lot of the Lunar Themes would fit her well/I could see her doing a lot of non-combat transformation.

prisma sun
#

You can totally do that.

#

Most of the charms with Protean bonuses work fine without them

bleak hazel
#

going animal form or Deadly Beastman is how you generally get truly atrocious stats, but most of your stuff still works in human form

#

(also I suppose there's nothing stopping you making a Deadly Beastman suite with all-Subtle mutations, although it would be somewhat less powerful)

tulip folio
#

Pondering a character of mine from a LOTW game that sadly died. Glacier Jade, daughter of a right monster of an ice spirit. She was a brawler with the Yun Clan Blade, fated to kill her mother (And very enthusiastic towards that prospect)

Glacial_Warden.png
#

Smug Mongolian Blademaster with Mummy Issues and her themes being about 'freedom' and 'being more than where you came from'

bleak hazel
#

I could have sworn there was a Lunar charm somewhere to let you wander around in war-form without appearing obviously non-human but I have comparatively little knowledge of the Lunar charmset compared to deebs/sids/abyssals/solars

tulip folio
#

In theory a solar would work well for her thematically but also 'Dawn Solar Swordsman' is the 'other players have no fun in combat' button 😛

bleak hazel
#

play a Dawn Solar martial artist

#

it's far more reasonable

#

and going up or down the Dodge and Resistance tree lets you easily scale the level of Solar Bullshit you want to be deploying without accidentally wasting encounters by picking the wrong charm

tulip folio
#

Hmm...I guess I could check out the...Reaper Daiklaive(?) Martial Arts. That's the Artifact Saber, I believe.

bleak hazel
#

there's nothing wrong with Dawns in and of themselves, it's the Solar combat trees that are cracked

prisma sun
#

Shining Point Into the Void Style

#

You can also do a full Thunderbolt Fantasy as a Sidreal with that style

bleak hazel
#

Single Point is by far the most powerful core book martial art, so sometimes it's on the banlist too but obviously Ask Your GM

prisma sun
#

and count as 3 characters

bleak hazel
#

other fun ones include Violet Bier of Sorrows and Thousand Blades

#

1kblades is also very strong but in a less "I join battle, I evaporate the BBEG, battle over" kind of way

#

we're getting Even Blade in the sid companion but it's not out yet

tulip folio
#

I think in Exalted, more than an Elemental, a Scary Fae Noble with a winter theme for her mother. As she wasn't really 'cold' as in 'winter' so much as cold as 'Endless Frozen Oblivion, the Death of All'. XD

bleak hazel
prisma sun
#

You can just be a Melee Air Deeb

bleak hazel
#

"I am the entire goddamn encounter"

#

throw in Sid Melee form for the parry benefits

prisma sun
#

or is Water Aspect Ice

#

cannot remember

tulip folio
#

Dragonblooded is also potentially possible but ironically despite her ice stuff, it wasn't a major part of her theming/was something she actively tried to tone down. XD

#

See: Mummy Issues

bleak hazel
#

Tepet has ice theming and they're an Air House, but I think you could go either way

tulip folio
#

Oh hey, found the chorus of a song I stole for 'Children's Rhyme about her mum that gave her traumatic flashbacks to hear'.

# 
Hair like snow, eyes that gleam,
Things aren't always what they seem. 
Teeth too long, hands too thin -- 
Always look beneath the skin!
bleak hazel
#

OK, yeah, ice sculptures are air-aspected in Craft, I think the "storm" theming picked up ice when the edge cases were handed out

bleak hazel