Exalted

[fierce star]

I'm more thinking it's a reason sidereals are so damn overworked, other than all the stuff that's their own fault

[next delta]

Well, the Incarna were made to do certain jobs in the Bureaucracy, but they've mostly ditched those responsibilities since they won the war against the Primordials

[tulip folio]

...vague pondering: How much of a Might Bonus would you assign battlegroups that have serious mechanical support? Like if one of the armies has Airship-Borne Troops and the other one has Normal Infantry?

That would be +1, I think?

[prisma sun]

+1 yeah

[coral wraith]

the Sidereals only did a few whoopsies and I blame the Bronze Faction for those :p

[prisma sun]

The sids did fiiiiiiiiine

[coral wraith]

I think jumping directly to Murder All Solars/Lunars Forever after the Usurpation made sense, but not reviewing that policy in any intervening years was definitely a mistake

Breaking news: Sins of the Father is a ratshit doctrine, actually

[spring lynx]

i mean, the thing is, they had generations of solars being solars before the usurpation

they weren't just working off the specific ones they overthrew

[lunar magnet]

looks at the Deathlords and how some of those ghosts came around

looks at the near miss of Merciless Balor

[coral wraith]

I mean, yes, I know that

When you're the dominant lifeform in Creation with no checks or balances and a literal Greek Hero Curse on you, it'll happen

I'm not saying the Usurpation was a bad thing, it had to happen

But we are also talking about zero compromise child murder with no other solution pursued in the following centuries

[spring lynx]

child murder?

[coral wraith]

Go and read the Sidereal fiction

In their book

Silent Moth out and out kills a just-Exalted Lunar kid

[fierce star]

Exaltation's minimum age is 'are you old enough to do something heroic enough'

[tulip folio]

Boss Baby(Lunar)

[coral wraith]

lmfao

[spring lynx]

i mean, it calls him (or her? the pronouns switch in the middle of the passage) young, but, like, that could be anywhere from literal toddler to mid-20s

[tulip folio]

Silly pondering on how they could give Infernals access to some of that Old Versatility if they insist on them being an ability-based exalt (Boo). XD

Hellava Entrance
Cost: 3m; Mins: Perform 4, Essence 1
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Uniform
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: None
The Infernal adds 2 successes to their first Action in a Scene or Combat. This immediately flares their Anima to Bonfire.

Reset: Once Per Scene

😛

[coral wraith]

He's wearing boots too big for him - I think that's a reasonably clear indicator he's pretty young

[spring lynx]

not necessarily, i had shoes too big for me well into my late 20s

[tulip folio]

(Not a serious charm)

[spring lynx]

like, anyone's shoes can be too big

[fierce star]

if you consider the ex2 comics canon, it involves the death of a newly-exalted solar heavily implied to be like

14

at the hands of a wyld hunt iirc

[tulip folio]

Also: Have you considered the baby just had bad vibes?

[coral wraith]

Yeah, like, even if this Lunar's age is too ambiguous to tell, which, fair enough

[fierce star]

I believe there was at least one Immaculate in ex2 as well who straight up walked away from the Hunt after having to kill one child too many

[spring lynx]

that is not remotely what i'm saying and you know it

[coral wraith]

I think it's not unfair to say the Immaculate Order and Sids by extension consider Anathema to be a thing kinda beyond age

[coral wraith]

Hey hey, he was making a gag

Not an attack on you, Ablative

[spring lynx]

sorry. i've seen people unironically pull that out as an "actually you're abetting atrocity" card

[tulip folio]

Fair, I should have made it more overt with like 'Have you considered the baby's fate had bad vibes' or something.

[coral wraith]

Right, well, either way, all good

My ultimate opinion here is that I think there's a reasonable throughline to indicate the Immaculate Order considers Anathema, Anathema, regardless of age

And it is fairly messed up

[fierce star]

yeah, I don't think anyone was arguing it's not messed up

[tulip folio]

I wonder if it would be unreasonable to have Light Armour with the Gunzosha evocations.

Less 'Space Marine' and more "Starcraft Ghost'

[velvet raft]

I think also "you did something cool and you got cool powers for it in a fashion that was completely beyond your control, therefore we have to kill you" is no better-reasoned when dealing with 20-year olds than it is with 15-year olds. It might be slightly less reprehensible, but it's still killing someone for something other people did and/or the presumption of what they will do.

And I think "the Sidereals got to see generations of Solars hanging around," misses an essential component of culture

The Sidereals got to see generations of Solars hanging around as an unchallenged god-king autocracy which existed primarily to aid and abet its worst actors

(It also fails to consider secondary factors beyond the solars and lunars themselves)

The Bronze Faction (and also the Gold Faction in a slightly different way!) is one big pile of the Fundamental Attribution Error

Which is, dare I say it, the point. They, like so many schemers in Exalted, have correctly diagnosed the symptoms but not the disease or an effective treatment plan

[bleak hazel]

Sids are also extremely well positioned to go "well, sorry, bad luck that you got the God-King Disease" because literally no Sidereal ever had a chance to not be one and the process of becoming one destroys their entire life up to that point

[velvet raft]

Aye. The narrative the Sids have created in light of that is extremely philosophically convenient for them personally.

[bleak hazel]

"Exaltation's a bitch" is an attitude fairly heavily ingrained in them, not many Sids get to do the standard Solar thing of "time to spend several months having a blast smiting evil before my decisions or the Realm catch up to me"

[velvet raft]

(One could also delve into the sociology of being an Exalt during peacetime as opposed to during a moment of immense crisis)

[bleak hazel]

Of all the Exalts the sids are the ones that most obviously have A Job To Do, since none of the other kinds can deal with fate going wibbly and when it does that bad things happen

[velvet raft]

(But to do that, the sids would have to confront the reality that they have been generally enjoying the benefits of relative peacetime for ages now)

(And I'm sure there are sids who are aware of it)

(But their establishment as a whole is unwilling to reckon with it)

[bleak hazel]

"what on earth are Lunars for" was an occasional fandom discussion during the long years of boring 2e Lunars, because you can see what Sids are for and you can see what Solars are for in terms of the whole defending creation thing

[velvet raft]

(For all their responsibilities, now they are the immortal god-kings answerable to nobody but each other)

[bleak hazel]

This is where there only being 100 Sidereals kinds of bites them again because this is way less interesting when it's literally the same 30-60 guys making decisions from the first age to now rather than an institution with enough members to have a proper split like that

They are also Quite Answerable unless you happen to be Chejop, and even he is checked occasionally by the various senior gods

3e has cut down on everyone in heaven loathing the Sidereals for unclear reasons, but they're not unquestionable masters of all they survey

I do like the new format of the bronze and gold factions as two mostly loose parties not primarily concerned about the Solars per se because it puts the focus on "you have been put in charge of The World, this will demand a thousand small compromises of you" more than "woo, absolute power, time to kick puppies and hold grudges for millennia for no apparent reason ".

It is interesting that the two Big Sides (TM) generally settle out as "Exalts who were handed their power at birth and told to live up to it" Vs "Exalts who attain their power at some crucial moment in their lives in response to something they did".

[bleak hazel]

A friend in one of my Lunar/Sid games suggests that given the usual way these PC parties usually justify their existence, the solution may be for the Gold Faction to hire literally every Lunar who is remotely amenable on to a Bureau of Destiny job

we are replacing the feud with petty workplace drama one tension-filled detente at a time

[tulip folio]

Have we seen any Infernal Charms yet or anything for them beyond that kinda dull 'They pick from people who are unhappy with the world' redone exaltation criteria + 'They're going to be an Ability-Based Excellency'?

Back to pondering Infernals and sorta wondering how much of what I liked about them is going to remain in 3e.

[bleak hazel]

Not as far as I know, outside their Essence charmset which I know some people thought was a bit boring

[tulip folio]

Part of the Pondering is sorta - A Defining thing that made Infernals so much fun in 2e was having the Widest Excellency, allowing them to engage in fields far ourside their expertise, as long as they did it with flair. But Solars by their nature (And thus, solar-likes) as an ability-based exalt have the Most Narrow Excellency.

Between that and 'they won't have a Yozi Charmset', I'll admit I'm really curious about what 3e Infernals will be as so far we mostly just know they won't be the things that they were in 2e.

Though I worry they'll be 'Hey, so we're taking a second shot at solars'.

If they end up 'Look, it's the Solar Charmset But Green', I'm going to be kinda cracky at Solar Larceny being so overpowered it lets you steal other exalt's books. XD

[coral wraith]

I mean, honestly, Iki, I think you can stop worrying

Abyssals is functionally that

And they're leagues better designed than Solars even in draft

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah it's just sorta...Abyssals were always kinda 'Goth Solars'. Infernals were their own, unique thing and I'm sorta hoping they maintain that unique identity instead of becoming dragged back towards 'Yep, this is a Solar Variant'. XD

If that makes sense?

[coral wraith]

Sure

[bleak hazel]

my main annoyance with Abyssals is that because they had to be "as powerful as solars", the bits of their charmset that determine most of the balance are direct mirrors of the most powerful Solar charms

which includes the 4-5 charms I would bonk with a rolled-up newspaper

"solars can combine three abilities to launch infinite attack strings on tick 1 of any fight, clearly this is the baseline measure of Solaroid power and not a stupid combo that removes most of the combat engine"

[tulip folio]

...now I'm remembering that was an actual keyword in 2e. 'Mirror', for 'This exists in both Solars and Abyssals, we're not printing it twice'.

[velvet raft]

I'm very much with Iki here, though, part of what made Infernals fun is that they were extremely weird

I loved Infernal excellencies

They were the best thing

[bleak hazel]

I was reading the old 2e SWLIHN lore yesterday and thinking "man, I would like to make a SWLIHN infernal" but it's quite hard to map them onto either of the other two

[velvet raft]

"Powerful when acting in your narrative role" is great

[bleak hazel]

I think I'd be best served with a lot of the yelling-at-people stuff from Abyssal Bureaucracy + some murder

[velvet raft]

clearly they should commission Jenna Moran to write them

[bleak escarp]

Reincarnation and past lives does complicate the matter somewhat, to be fair.

[velvet raft]

It doesn't

[tulip folio]

Golden Years Tarnished Black was a very fun (And horrifying) Ebon Dragon charm that would work so well in the 3e intimacy environment.

[bleak hazel]

for the Sids, you literally inherit the job, the magic sword and the paperwork directly, possibly with an explanatory letter attached by means of Sid Craft, so there is a fairly straight throughline there

nobody really does Sidereal past life drama though, because the Solar/Lunar bond eats most of the dramatic space there

[velvet raft]

"You are culpable for the actions of an alleged previous version of you who you have at absolute most extremely vague memories of being" is just Sins of the Father: 2nd Edition, now with no changes

[velvet raft]

I think in general 3e intimacies would play well with Infernals as entities of role rather than of skill

[tulip folio]

It's thing was that it tainted memories, emphasising the worst and downplaying the best. The overall effect was that it Inverted Feelings, though it didn't introduce outright falsehoods. So like, a wife could end up remembering her husband as a philandering, sex obsessed maniac because he sometimes looked at other women but she wouldn't remember him as a thief unless he'd actually stolen something at some point.

Being able to go 'Hey, that Positive Intimacy? Yeah, it's a Negative One now' or 'Hey, that negative intimacy? It's a positive one now' would be very scary in the 3e intimacy game.

[velvet raft]

An Infernal doesn't learn to be good with swords, they learn to do things the way Malfeas does things

[bleak escarp]

No, that's too locked into a specific answer to how much the Exalted's past lives are them or different people. It's a question that's left deliberately nebulous; to say that the Solars/Lunars that you're fighting a Creation-spanning war with past the Usurpation are the same people who were responsible for the Usurpation, is a defensible position. It's not one I tend to hold myself, the whole past lives thing is something that doesn't especially interest me, but the narrative thrust of it is there.

[tulip folio]

Ebon Dragon Infernal: "Hey, don't you remember how you felt as a slave? How it really taught you the value of hard work and pushed you to find new limits?"
Some Poor Bastard: "Hey, you're right, it was a good time!"

[bleak hazel]

the 3e Lunars explicitly have "furious anger at the Usurpers" baked in to their Essence Fever now, which I think was kind of an odd decision

[velvet raft]

I could not disagree more philosophically but I've also said all I have to say on the matter.

[bleak hazel]

"Lunar exaltation comes with an inherited grudge at these people in particular" is a very awkward way to finagle the Silver Pact into a bigger thing than it would otherwise be

[velvet raft]

Yeaaaaah

[tulip folio]

Well, okay. Technically that second example with slavery would be with the upgrade Need Becomes Want, which let them take bad memories and warp them into a weird obsessive positive one.

[bleak hazel]

Lunars have great mechanical bones in 3e but I think their lore is probably the weakest of the big four splats

[velvet raft]

I continue to think removing the Thousand Streams River by name was a bad idea

[bleak hazel]

admittedly huge upgrade over 1/2e where they did absolutely nothing

[bleak escarp]

eh

The TSR was a garbage concept in my book, I don't miss it.

But I tend towards a view that I don't really think Lunars need a singular Big Special Hook to be engaging in the first place.

[velvet raft]

I forget who here said it, but it works for Lunar society to sort of be Leftist Infighting But With Weregoats

[bleak escarp]

That was me :P

[tulip folio]

...oh boy, I'd forgotten how creepy the Infernal Equivelent of Wearing Red To A Wedding was.

'Our Little Secret'

Where rather than people finding it normal

They instead know just how weird and horrible it is but are unable to speak about it or act on it

[velvet raft]

Ah, it was IterationDrive

[tulip folio]

Ebon Dragon's charms were the worst (Complimentary)

[bleak escarp]

Ah, I guess I just said something similar then.

[bleak hazel]

yeah, I like the silver pact as more of a Lunar mailing list than a unified strategic agenda

[velvet raft]

Not everything needed to be TSR, but TSR makes sense as an institutional truism about why we're all on the same side even though we absolutely aren't

[bleak hazel]

it also means you get to treat the various Lunar dominions as entities as unto themselves, rather than "raksi, MHS, everyone else, these three groups have three very similar agendas"

the one example we really get of a Lunar that doesn't have the standard set of intimacies ("Defining: Hate the usurpers, love the pact") is Sublime Danger, who is great

[tulip folio]

snrk
Right, the Ebon Dragon Social Defence was 'If I have no values, then I have no restrictions'. Rather than actively denying an effect you could spend willpower to avoid, they could instead regain 1 willpower every time they were forced to do something they'd object to and never gain limit for going against their own motivations and urges.

Which in 3e would be like 'When you could deny an effect by citing an intimacy, don't! Get a willpower instead for going along with it!'

[bleak hazel]

big fan of Sublime Danger, to the point I designated her as my Abyssals' lunar bondmate despite her being on the other side of creation because I thought it would be funny

[velvet raft]

Ma-Ha-Suchi is a horrible person and people should get together and roll him, but we as the collective of Lunars have more immediate problems and very good reasons to tolerate that horrible person (they're not good enough, says gk, but this makes sense as a bad conclusion to come to) and we need a philosophy to justify that: hence, Thousand-Streams River

[coral wraith]

TSR was a crazy sketchy concept that skirted authoritian lines a Lot, Lunars are better off without it

[bleak hazel]

sending gifts of soulsteel swords by Infallible Messenger

(this does not work, larger messenger is needed)

[velvet raft]

I can see that from a meta perspective, I guess I primarily appreciated it as a complete fiction that enables Lunars to not be at war with one another

Even when maybe they should be

[bleak hazel]

I kind of want them to be at war with one another, though

[tulip folio]

snrk
Right, Ebon Dragon Infernals could get the Sidereal 'Reduce the TN of your actions'...with the restriction that this was always an Obvious effect to sidereals and showed up in loom audit reports.

[bleak hazel]

it adds more style than the default "everyone line up to punch the nearest derg"

[tulip folio]

So you needed to go 'Is this worth Telling The Sidereals Where I Am?'. Also gave you a lot of nasty fate backlash, as the more you reduced TNs, the more you'd have to deal with increased TN's later.

[velvet raft]

*at war with one another all the time without stopping

They should definitely go to war with one another sometimes, you are correct

[bleak hazel]

well, they shouldn't be that either, but I think you can fairly easily invoke Creation Big for that

[velvet raft]

Sometimes the leftist infighting escalates

[bleak hazel]

there just isn't that much non-ideological friction most of the time because the threshold is huge and only a large part of it is moon at any given time

[velvet raft]

TSR also has big vibes of "a bunch of superhuman demigods try to put together a philosophy of enabling human autonomy and then Woops We Did Authoritarianism Again"

[bleak hazel]

I don't think Fangs at the Gate includes any real intra-Lunar friction at all besides MHS and Raksi, who have a non-violent grudge at most

[tulip folio]

...I feel like for 3e if they wanted some of the 2e versatility juice, grabbing from Cracked Cell Circumvention would be pretty good for Widening The Excellency. Cracked Cell added 'Hey, you can use your excellency on Literally Anything, as long as you're in this specific situation'. For Cracked Cell, you can use your excellency on Litereally Any Roll, as long as you're trying to Escape Confinement. Seducing the guard? Check! Cracking mystical wards? Check! Deciphering the Labyrinth you've been dumped in? Check! Leading an uprising? Check!

[velvet raft]

I dunno, I guess overall I like when individual Exalts can be good (obvious) but Exalted society has a tendency to be very, very bad

[bleak hazel]

actually wait there's Ul the Burning Eye, who is the opposite of Feather Drenched in that he hates only deebs rather than only Sids

[velvet raft]

Which the sids have built in

[bleak hazel]

and is trying to cook up the anti-deeb genocide plague

[velvet raft]

Good on them

[bleak hazel]

it is mentioned that even the Pact thinks he's a bit much

[tulip folio]

(Sorry for rambling about Infernals. I've just realized everyone else is on a different topic XD)

[velvet raft]

Naw I appreciate your infernal ramblings

I like infernals

[bleak hazel]

the Sids actually don't have the "stacking multiple sids makes them idiots" thing in 3rd and honestly I much prefer that

you don't need to write in "your curse is groupthink", humans just Do Groupthink

[tulip folio]

That and: There's too few sids to get an entire dumbassery together unless they're player characters 😛

[velvet raft]

And the sids are also very, very much bound up in institutions

[tulip folio]

And player characters don't need an excuse to be dumbasses

[velvet raft]

Which have institutional inertia

[bleak hazel]

I really like the Sids but I do think they get a bit of a bad showing sometimes because Exalted has this continuous habit of going "yeah, institutions are always weaknesses"

[tulip folio]

...oh god, I forgot the Ebon Dragon didn't have a second excellency

He's got the Anti-Excellency.

[bleak hazel]

Solars get to be the glorious shining god-kings because they materialize as wandering monads of infinite power and zero attachment, Lunars use their dominions as ablative armour, etc.

[velvet raft]

The Lunars as the other side of that -- feuding anarchists who keep reinventing authoritarianism in their own backyards because they don't have any institutions -- is good imo

[tulip folio]

'When you see someone doing a thing that would oppose you, reduce their dice pool by spending motes'

They don't become good, they make you shit

[bleak hazel]

3e deebs are much better because it is demonstrated that the Realm, for all its horrors, is extremely competent

they aren't classic fascist-mythology bad guys who are simultaneously terrfying threats and complete incompetents who collapse when the heroes tap them

[velvet raft]

And we know for a fact that the Shogunate was even more competent before them

Since the Shogunate effectively held First Age Creation together in functional-ish form, a task that was absurdly fuckhuger than what the Realm does

They just took a punch they could not really be prepared for

[tulip folio]

Right, Ebon Dragon also had the Infernal 'Training Mortals' charm. And by training mortals I mean 'making them their worst possible self'

You unleash the worst parts of themselves and they are transformed into an appropriate First Circle Demon.

[velvet raft]

I did enjoy the Ebon Dragon as "embodiment of things sucking"

[tulip folio]

So a violent warrior might become a Blood Ape etc

They get to keep memories and any stat that's higher than the demon's.

[coral wraith]

I definitely don't think 3e does that, especially with how the Immaculate Order is portrayed

[velvet raft]

2e has many faults but there was a line in it that caught my attention saying effectively, "the thing about the immaculate philosophy is that people genuinely get stuff they need out of it, it's a good philosophy that just happens to have 'do whatever the deebs say' written in several places"

[tulip folio]

So much that one of his charms is 'GOING NEVERBORN!'. You become a creature of darkness and can use necromancy through his sorcerous initiations as the Ebon Dragon invokes his own worst self.

[velvet raft]

"Screw you guys, I'm going home"

[tulip folio]

Though it's not an easy process as you deal aggravated damage to yourself equal to your incapacitated level and it expressly notes that no effect that reduces pain works on stopping this.

So it's very much a 'If I swap, I'm not going back any time soon'

[velvet raft]

Gotta die to go Neverborn

But it's very ED to have a "flip the table, make everything worse" charm

[tulip folio]

Black Mirror Shintai is likely a lot more functional in 3e.

As it was 'Hey, give me your character sheet. I'm you now too'

But 3e has Quick Characters for most NPCs

So there's a lot less 'Sure, this is gunna be like 3-4 pages full of charms to understand'

[velvet raft]

The problem with the ED being Like That is that if he's a major PC power source that kinda makes things weird

If it were something like "he only does akuma" that would be more functional as his gimmick

[tulip folio]

I mean, if he's not a PC power source they're not really Infernals. He was one of the Core Yozi for Infernals/the patron of their Eclipse-equivelent.

[velvet raft]

Yeah

Hence why him being Like That probably cannot be maintained

Or at least him passing it along to his exalts

[tulip folio]

...oh, that's cute. I'd forgotten how the Infernal Ox-Body actually gave you More Levels than even the Lunar one.

...but they were all -3 and -4 levels.

Becuase you're emulating the shattered but not dead Malfeas

[velvet raft]

I do like how sometimes Infernal charms are adversarial to their own users

"You have been built to emulate five of the most unhappy, fucked-up beings in existence. Have fun!"

[tulip folio]

Malfeas also had some of your Medical Charms. In the most miserable way.

You could cure anything through RADIATION TREAMENT.

You gave people Green Sun Wasting (Aka: Terminal Radiation Poisoning) and when it would Kill Them, all their blighted and rotting flesh sloughs off to reveal them healed and reborn.

So they could fix anything but you'd go through hell getting to health

I liked this element of 'Yeah, the infernal can do a lot of good things but they're leveraging some real horrible shit to get to that point'

[tulip folio]

The Malfeas 'resisting mental effects' one there is fun. Whenever you could spend willpower to resist an unnatural mental effect? Yeah, do it for free!

Oh and your caste mark flares into sight whenever you do it.

This is non-optional

You can't turn it off

You will not bow again, even if it compromises your plans

[velvet raft]

I wonder if 3e Infernals could play into the like

[tulip folio]

Flickers of hateful green fires emanate from the Infernal’s eyes and mouth while using this Charm, curling up to hint at the outlines of a burning crown upon his brow ornamented with the central jewel of his caste mark. This display fades as soon as the Infernal finishes speaking his attack. This enhancement is not optional.

"HELLO, I AM A SUBTLE EXALT DOING SUBTLE EXALT THINGS."

[velvet raft]

"yeah okay the primordials were not nice! maybe absolutely nobody deserved what was done to them"

hurt people hurt people type of stuff etc

Which I guess also doesn't play great with "the Ebon Dragon is the living embodiment of evil"

[tulip folio]

...right, I forgot the Malfeas 'Deal with Lying' charm.

It doesn't let you identify lying.

Instead it makes people who lie explode in green fire.

[upper stratus]

i feel like that lets you identify liars

cause of the green fire

[tulip folio]

To be fair, a lot of things explode in green fire around a Malfeas infernal. XD

[upper stratus]

'shit, which of my green fire effects did that'

[velvet raft]

See the truly Malfeas answer is

"Don't worry about it"

"I don't make mistakes and neither do my green fire effects"

[tulip folio]

Cece had the other fun training charm that let you do Wishmaster Stuff.

If someone expresses dissatisfaction with something about themselves or makes a wish, you can grant it, giving them a dot in an ability or attribute.

Or with upgrades you can add merits like resources or mutations to the grantable stuff

...but by doing so, they are bound to do you a service in the future (In 3e it would be likely 'you can leverage this as a major intimacy')

As You Wish
Cost: —
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Penitents Like Scattered Grains, Verdant Emptiness Endowment

Cecelyne is both malevolent and endlessly giving, as those who mistake her gifts for kindness and indebt themselves to her law can attest. Whenever an Infernal with this Charm overhears prayers with Penitents Like Scattered Grains, she may answer those prayers by activating Verdant Emptiness Endowment as if the supplicant were in range of that Charm. The prayer itself provides the arcane link to convey the miracle answer. If other Charms expand the options that Verdant Emptiness Endowment can give, these expansion effects may also be transmitted. Infernals who know the Charm Locust Mana Plague (see pp. 126-127) may answer prayers requesting food by having the demon locusts crawl into life around the supplicant.

"I see you're worshipping someone other than me. What if, instead, I granted that prayer?"

[velvet raft]

Which is an extremely scary power

[tulip folio]

The infernal I played a lot of was Loviatar, who was Ebon Dragon + Cece as her primary paths.

She was just full Wishmaster Nonsense.

[velvet raft]

I think if I were to do an Infernal I would be extremely predictable and do Malfeas + Adorjan

https://tenor.com/J2nc.gif

[tulip folio]

Cece also let you just do some Dr Strange Nonsense.

Swallowed in Eternity
Cost: 1m
Mins: Essence 2
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious, Shaping
Duration: One action
Prerequisite Charms: Sand-Slip Trick

Though savants marvel that Cecelyne’s vast expanse may be crossed in only five days, the truth is that if the Endless Desert wills it, she may stretch her roads out to infinity. Expressing this principle, the Infernal holds her hand out, palm-first, toward a single opponent. This is treated as a Blockade Movement action, though the Infernal rolls (Willpower + Cult) in place of ([Strength or Dexterity] + Athletics). Should the Infernal win this contest, her target is rendered unable to approach her for the duration of the Charm. The landscape between warlock and pursuer stretches out infinitely, and although the target perceives himself to be moving, no amount of exertion on his part can close the distance between the two. To observers, the area around the target seems to confusingly sprawl outward without limit, but does not actually move him away from any other individuals or objects. This Charm cannot be used on a single opponent more than once per action.

'How about I make the distance between you and me Infinite?'

[velvet raft]

This is the part where I mention an unfinished Familiar of Zero/Exalted crossover fic that is way better than it has any right to be, in which Louise fails to summon a familiar entirely and so becomes an Infernal exalt

(From back in the 2e days, tho)

[bleak hazel]

Interestingly, the only Yozi Button in 3e is a Sidereal charm that summons the Wind of Adorjan to flay your enemies with aggravated damage

apparently if you do it too often or summon her in such a way that she sees particularly interesting things she might involve you in one of her patented Adorjan Whirlwind Romances, so sids are warned not to do it too often

[coral wraith]

Very funny the Maidens just made that charm in particular

[bleak hazel]

Apparently Saturn and Adorjan have an agreement

[upper stratus]

saturn's my goat fr

[coral wraith]

Saturn my beloved

[tulip folio]

I think if I had Full Control of 3e Infernals I'd likely go with 'The Yozi were antithetical to humanity but they were not really malevolent until humanity taught them how to hate by breaking them, imposing human order upon the inhuman.'

To put them in a little bit more of a 'Yeah, they're linked to demons but that doesn't mean everything about them is Going To Be An Asshole For Certain'

Sorta like how the 'Kill all the fucking solars' is less 'How dare the plebs rise up against the Proper Rulers'

And more 'Yeah, people lose wars for power. That's how shit works'

If that makes sense?

[bleak hazel]

The last part depends heavily on the Yozi to be fair

SWLIHN was happy to surrender to the new top dogs until they didn't accept said surrender, Malfeas is a little more cross

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah, just more a bit of how 2e tended to focus more on 'if you opposed the solars, you get the shit end of the stick'. I wouldn't necessarily make them good but I'd put a bit more focus on the less harmful parts of each yozi as a part of them that existed. They're natural forces and natural forces don't purely hurt people.

[velvet raft]

I don't even know that I think they should be antithetical to humanity

Just ... antithetical to humanity standing astride the order of creation

We were just supposed to be Some Guys

Not The Guys

In that sense you could play the Primordials as appropriately primal forces of nature, and the process of becoming Yozi constrained them to a more human perspective

[bleak escarp]

Agreed, and also it didn't, like, work? Either on the meta level as a design concept to give them some sauce, or as an in-universe philosophy.

[bleak escarp]

I mean there's the existence of the Shadow Fang Vanguard, and there's sketches of other friction points, like the distrust of Amatha as a former Dynast.

I think the Pact has plenty of sources of friction in 3e, but it's too eager to keep them at a mostly-resolved simmer.

Needs more stuff like how Golden-Leaf Liseli is described as openly feuding with adherents of Sha'a Oka who try to operate in the inner Threshold, and like, for that stuff to be more than a sketch.

[bleak escarp]

(But then I would say that, my preferred model is still the TAW vision where the Silver Pact splintered and the Lunar play experience is defined by weight of NPC writeups sketching individual adventures, with a scattering of remnants of the Pact and the Moonkillers who destroyed it)

[fierce star]

I may or may not be sidelining my Aurorals project in order to rewrite ex3 lunar fluff in such a way it no longer makes me quietly seethe and/or scream like a rabid orangutang

Essence Fever: Survival. Lunars exalt when death is certain, when they are going through hell and a breath away from perishing. Their essence fever latches onto the human drive to *survive*, no matter what the odds, to push through the impossible and keep themselves and all they care about safe.

The Silver Pact: mutual aid and teaching organization dating back to the first age. Unofficial at the time. Most lunars are members, most additionally belong to one of the three Parties, each defined around what they believe the best way for creation to survive is. Last unanimous decision was breaking and reforging the castes.

The Shadow Fang Vanguard: Believe Lunars deserve to inherit the Creation Ruling Mandate to lead creation. A collection of petty god-kings ruling wilderness fiefdoms. Heavily militarized.

The Bloody Claw Circle: Believe in abolishing the Creation Ruling Mandate and that Exalts do not deserve to rule by default. Anarchist by nature. Both militarized and philosophical.

Thousand Rivers Stream Project: Believe that the best way to have creation survive has not been found yet and more experiments need to be done at smaller scales; once a perfect society has been found it can be extrapolated out to a creation-wide society. Heavily philosophical.

Basically treating the Pact as a face for 'look, we're all on the same side' but then you take the mask off and while it's still all leftist infighting, it's not just one flavor of it with different seasonings sprinkled on top.

is there juice here? I dunno, I'm just doing it to get the rage out of my head tbh

[velvet raft]

I like it but I am personally inclined to say that the Thousand Streams River is, for all its high-handed philosophy, more of a justification for why we can all work together without stabbing each other in the face than a truly coherent belief

By design it's vague and allows an incredible variety of thought (including really, really bad thought) as a pretext for cooperation

"Please don't try to kill Ma-Ha-Suchi, he has a decent army" the doctrine

[fierce star]

It's kind of by design here the least defined of the parties, as I'm going for them. The pact itself is kind of a joke, but one the lunars desperately try to keep other people from finding out is a joke.

[velvet raft]

That seems about right

[fierce star]

'ape shall never kill ape' is in effect and mostly works because killing the average lunar is a pain in the ass and it makes you look bad to your peers and the only reason you've not been like, having all your stuff taken is a combination of clout and toeing whatever the party line of the day is

[bleak escarp]

For my part my preferred model is sorta...

There was the Silver Pact, and it was a bloody dream that choked on its own berserk ferocity. The Crones who survived the calamity and attrition of Exalted warfare were the cynics who sent others to die in their stead, and eventually those others rebelled at being treated like pawns instead of heroes.

There are the Shogunate-era Mothers, fractured and belligerent and hesitant. Most are still fighting the Realm, and are the most tight-knit group, but also the most aggressively individualistic, gun-shy of recruiting other Lunars and becoming the old monsters they overthrew, and haunted by the things they've done already. I'd definitely keep Smoke-and-Honey around, the last Moonkiller wearily hunting for Ma-Ha-Suchi's head and only incidentally fighting the Realm along the way.

There are the Maidens, united by the Realm's looming shadow but divided by their origins, and keenly aware that their heritage has been thrice-shattered at this point - the Usurpation, the Moonkillers, and two apocalypses besides. Most would gladly cooperate in theory, but are scattered by geography and culture, invested in the traditions and causes of their homelands, sometimes so much as to put them at loggerheads with other Lunars, if their homelands have feuded. They never find each other without already having history.

Do they band together? Of course they do, but it's tattered and patchwork and desperate. So much has been lost, but that's never stopped the world rolling on, and today's fight won't wait for you to sort through yesterday's grief.

Sometimes it's a Shogunate Mother trying to be a teacher without being a master, trying to keep that division clear between their life as an absolute God-King of a Wyld-fastness, and their life as a shy, reluctant mentor to young heroes, painfully aware of how badly it can go.

Sometimes it's a Maiden from the early Realm coordinating a thin-spread network of Lunars across part of a Direction, hoping they can get to the next one in time.

Sometimes it's Ma-Ha-Suchi telling young Lunars so many pretty lies as he works his way through Creation, still a razorblade in the world's flesh.

And sometimes it's three or four young heroes who, o chance, o miracle, o Luna, find each other and hash out or pointedly don't discuss enough of the grudges they inherited from their mortal lives, to cling desperately to one another as the only people who understand what they've inherited as immortals.

If Lunars and the Pact are queer elders and political ancestors, then being honest about that means incorporating the strife, and the grief for what's been lost.

[fierce star]

see my thing is that I never fell deep into the TAW hole so pulling stuff from there would feel stilted in my writing, since it's not a major inspiration for me

[velvet raft]

The TAW stuff feels a little one-note to me, personally

Which is, admittedly, almost the point

It's to create A Specific Vibe

I've just never hungered for that re: Lunars

[bleak hazel]

I like this vibe myself, but I admit I have never really gone through TAW

never played much 2e although I was kind of proximal to the vibes

[fierce star]

I have nothing against TAW, it just didn't quite hit the vibe I wanted

which... I like the TSRP. I like the idea of Lunars looking at the first age and going 'well, that didn't work. How do we fix it?' and having a thousand different answers.

[velvet raft]

"What do we do with these thousand different answers? No one's going to change their minds."
shrug "We pretend it's all feeding into a single goal and hope the goal materializes along the way."

[fierce star]

"We'll keep working at those answers until we end up just one that we know for sure works!" "Okay but how do we get people to agree on that." "Ritual combat?" "Someone get the full moon outta here"

[velvet raft]

Something something "three hundred lunars, one thousand opinions"

[fierce star]

Lunars as Leftist Infighting can be done well, I just don't think ex3 pulled it off by making it far too smoothed over without enough rough edges culturally or personally for lunars

(Bring back Tamuz you cowards, he'd fit right in with ex3's versions of the other lunar elders)

[next delta]

What was the Thousand Streams River?

[fierce star]

Basically the Thousand Streams River Project was the core idea behind the silver pact in ex2

where the lunars went 'okay the deliberative, that doesn't work. No society as we've tried so far works to survive all these apocalypses. What society do we make that can? And can it survive without Exalted pulling the strings or the reins?"

[velvet raft]

It was a political ... program? Project? Saying that the many, many different approaches to politically uplifting humanity being taken by different Lunars were all working towards the same goal

A river formed of a thousand streams

[fierce star]

basically taking the lunar theme of 'survival-at-all-costs' and applying it to society, an effort to make a way for humans to live that could survive anything creatoin threw at them. As gkathellar says, in theory it was, uh

[velvet raft]

This is a nice metaphor that was never really true and which probably didn't have to be

[fierce star]

all the lunars working together for the same goal of that

[velvet raft]

It was a way of saying "we're all on the same side, YES EVEN HIM"

[fierce star]

in practice it was, also, leftist infighting but with more ritual honor duels when someone insulted your matriarchy for being too close to teh Realm, which was already a failed state

[velvet raft]

And that meant it shielded bad actors constantly

[next delta]

Classic

[velvet raft]

But it also meant Lunars were less likely to spend time and resources killing each other

[fierce star]

said bad actors were, admittedly, also shielded by being impossibly ancient god-beast survivors of the first age

[velvet raft]

Yeah

[fierce star]

and being a lot worse than their ex3 versions, morally/ethically and like, as characters in general

[next delta]

Really, I think it's more weird that the Lunars interact as much as they do than the peaceful part. Creation is extremely big (even if it is just the threshold) and there is only like 400(?) of them

[fierce star]

300 in ex2, 400-ish in ex3

but basically there's charms and sorcery for that

[next delta]

I guess they all want to basically have their own city state or bigger, and 400 of those is a lot

[fierce star]

yeah

[velvet raft]

The thing is, if you teach a new young lunar about the TSR, and you say, "and that's why you don't try to kill MHS", maybe they don't try and get killed by MHS

While also, yes, keeping the big angry elders from each others' throats

At least in theory

[fierce star]

Ma-Ha-Suchi and Raksi were always incapable of not being at war in ex2

[next delta]

Clearly the real problem with thousands streams river is there is only 400 of them

[fierce star]

I think in ex3 they're more cordial

lmao

[next delta]

Aren't they like, pretty far away from each other?

[velvet raft]

Hence the above adaptation of a classic joke

[fierce star]

They're in the same general area of creation

both east-southeast

[bleak hazel]

I have made a very silly sidereal

[next delta]

"all the big players are far away from each other and all the newbies are told how scary they are" are pretty good enough reasons for why they don't fight more imo

[bleak hazel]

he spends 1 mote per incoming attack to sit at defence 16-17 with no parry penalties

full power solar cannot connect with him reliably

[fierce star]

nice

[velvet raft]

Mm, bad idea

Let's not keep that

[next delta]

Yeah, but that's still like hundreds of miles iirc. Though I think the designers acknowledged that Exalted doesn't fully respect how absolutely huge creation is lol

[bleak hazel]

I would not actually play this in a real game but it is a fun theorycrafting exercise

max power Excellent Strike + full excellency + rising sun slash with a light weapon only generates about 15-16 successes on average

parry, sid boy, parry

[velvet raft]

I can't believe you would just ping Izen like that

[fierce star]

Yeah exalted writers have never had a sense of scale

and it only got worse when they made ex3 exalted bigger

the fucking blessed isle is now like, the same area as earth's surface i think?

[bleak escarp]

Yeah unfortunately for me the TSR is an utterly poisoned well.

[velvet raft]

Exalted's scale is "as big as it needs to be"

[next delta]

I don't think it's quite that bad (the long side of Blessed Isle is 3.3k miles vs 25k miles for the circumference of the Earth)

Courtesy of this handy site: https://www.loom3e.com/map/

[fierce star]

oh nice!

there was one fo these for 2e but I thought we were out of interactive maps for exalted

[bleak hazel]

I like to think the Isle is about russia-sized

the fun thing is that yu-shan is a city the size of the isle

it is comically massive in the other direction, where this implies a spectacularly huge population rather than tons of empty space

[fierce star]

lol

I wonder if Abyssals is gonna give us an illustrated map of hte underworld

[next delta]

Yu-shan does have much denser housing options than most of Creation

Also probably higher standards lol

[dense verge]

related to the above, each square on the world map is roughly 1 France in terms of area

[fierce star]

Also, I knwo I ramble about ex3 lunars a lot

but thinking about it: the war for the caul is a lot more interesting from the DB perspective to me than the lunar perspective

the lunars are like 'ah yes we are defending a holy sight' whereas for DBs it's that plus 'that we know performs a literal uncopyable miracle that nowhere else in creation can perform'

*site

like, is that just me?

sorry

[bleak hazel]

yeah, I agree

the Caul is very obviously set up as the One Big Lunar Win, the outcome seems pretty obvious, but I can see why the deebs fought so hard for it

[fierce star]

like it's sacred ground for both of them, and them working against each other is... i feel like it's supposed to be set up as a tragedy, but it neve rreally comes off as that in the writing

I mean, it is a tragedy, this is exalted, almost everything is

[velvet raft]

The 1e word of god was outright "barring player intervention, Things Fall Apart"

[fierce star]

I think I just feel like the caul would be fun if there was more spice to it from the lunar aside other than 'well maybe something cool will happen if a lunar does the pilgrimage'. I'm fine with open ended questions leaving it up to Gms what might happen, but the caul just feels unbalanced in the writing to me.

[prisma sun]

Well like

I think "I have direct memories of helping my mom build this" gives them a lot of stakes in it

[fierce star]

... Do they? I'm going over the Caul part in FATG and it just talks about the caul's origins, which definitely sounds more like institutional memory than direct memory.

[prisma sun]

Deebs don't have memories from previous Exaltations

Lunars do

[fierce star]

Lunars sometimes do. Unless something changed and I skipped over it, past life memories are the exception, not the rule.

at best you get flashes of insight here and there that are like, stunt fodder.

[prisma sun]

I believe every Celestial has pretty vivid memories of previous Exaltations

[fierce star]

That sounds very unlike what I believe I have read, so let me go back to the core book then

like I know a big thing in ex2 was that exaltations were generally washed (either by lytek or a monstrance) before being reused to make sure previous memories didn't overwhelm the new bearer, and a bi gissue Infernals had was that they weren't getting cleaned, which gave them access to past lives as an actual merit

now obviously that's 2, not 3

so i'm digging through hte core book now

[prisma sun]

It's true of Solars and Sidreals in 3e at least

The whole scrubbing process isn't mentioned once

[bleak hazel]

siddies also get their predecessor's email inbox, which is very funny

there is explicitly a craft charm that they frequently use to leave "if you're reading this..." parcels for their successors, complete with artifact weapons and final tasks

great spy drama fodder

[fierce star]

I'd say that means they don't get clear memories of past lives, then, if sidereals need to leave 'if you're reading this I'm already dead' notes

[bleak hazel]

I believe it varies heavily

certainly did in past editions, Past Life Georg with five dots in the merit and perfect recall of his last five incarnations was very much an outlier

[fierce star]

so searching the core book pdf for 'past lives' and 'past life' only gets a couple charms referencing it and a few descriptions that amount to stunt fodder, nothing explicitly saying that celestial exalted have clear, vivid, and full memories of past lives

[bleak hazel]

really fun charm

also works as intra-party email

[fierce star]

yeah, I'm finew ith it varying heavily--ojne of the example lunars in FATG has nearly full memories of their previous incarnation, but like

voy is implying that every exalt is like that

[prisma sun]

No, I'm just saying Lunars can and the ones that do take things they were present for much more personally

[bleak hazel]

god sids are so good

every time I read their charmset I find a new cool button

[fierce star]

then I misunderstood your implication there, sorry

still it feels like it should be an outlier, especially given it seems liek the caul predates the divine revolution actually

or, no

it's the dreams of luna after gaia left

[prisma sun]

Lunars and Deebs both helped build it

[fierce star]

No, they helped pin it to creation so it didn't wander off again

[bleak hazel]

this one is very neat, instead of the regular Solar/Abyssal "summon merits with bureaucracy" button you get to craft them

and you can just slam that stuff down and leave random insurgent grouplets all over a country if you want

[prisma sun]

Sids are so fun

[coral wraith]

I'll be real, I feel like the Essence Fever here in particular runs completely contrary to what Ex3 exalted fever is actually meant to do? The best way for an Exalt to survive in a densely populated area is to just... lay low and do nothing, live a normal life, when Essence Fever is supposed to push you into being anything but normal

[prisma sun]

Yeah I kinda agree

Essence Fever is meant to be active, not reactive

[tulip folio]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10tcb1RfOE4&ab_channel=OingoBoingo-Topic Here you go ID, theme music for it 😛

[tulip folio]

I'll admit, I feel a bit conflicted on the Solar/Abyssal 'summon merits with bureaucracy'. As on one hand: It's pretty damn cool to do. On the other hand: It sorta leaves splats who's themes had them do so really easily and naturally/have done it historically nowhere to go up-wise as 'Solars did it and solars get the best version'. XD

[bleak hazel]

The one I like most is the Abyssal one that lets you plant a spy

that seems very on theme for Abyssal Bureaucracy

I am admittedly not sure which splats you're referring to other than Infernals with Verdant Emptiness Endowment

[tulip folio]

Infernals being about to Wishmaster things into existence or Raksha just forming wealth, retinue and objects from glamour.

[bleak hazel]

I continue to forget that Raksha ever got PC rules

I do feel that those charms are spectacular standouts mostly because there's literally no bureaucracy system that might conceivably have some basic method for amassing power in it

so you get to E3 Solaroid bureaucracy and suddenly holy shit I get actual stuff

[tulip folio]

While I do worry about well 'Solars doing the things splats are good at better than those splats'. XD

Verdant Emptiness Endowment is going to need rather a lot of a boost in 3e to compete with Solar Bureaucracy's ability to just go 'Oh yeah, whatever background merits are needed' so easily. XD

[fierce star]

Survival is active because there are always more threats to you and yours, I'd argue. It's not just about the immediate 'right now, what is about to kill me', but 'what could kill me ijn the future, what can stop me from thriving, what can stop my family from thriving'

'how do I keep myself and my kin and the people I care about safe forever'

Survival is only a passive goal if you've already solved for most of your life threats, and in a setting like creation there are always more life threats

like, a lunar's essence fever will start with 'how do I survive this situation', then progress to 'I survived that, how do I make sure I survive the next one'

[tulip folio]

...a vague pondering: Isn't Anger also reactive? As like, you need something to be Angry About.

[fierce star]

... that's also true yeah, most people don't just get mad for no reason

[tulip folio]

ID, you're on the internet. You know that's not true.

😛

[fierce star]

shhh

we're talking about sane, normal people, not internet screamers

[valid summit]

yes it is how fucking dare you (joking)

[fierce star]

also like. Luna is not really, or atl east was not traditionally, that associated with anger.

She was a canny bitch who won his position as deity of the moon by killing all its siblings in the womb and eating their essences.

Luna won because of all the nascent lunar gods, she survived when they did not.

At least the ex2 story is like that, I don't think anything in ex3 has retconned it?

[tulip folio]

The most passive exaltation: Abyssals because it's hard to get more passive than 'being dead' 😛

[fierce star]

I mean their essence fever is 'be goth' inninit (this is a shitpost)

[tulip folio]

Inninit
ID secretly revealed to be Liam Gallagher.

[fierce star]

no i've just drank of his heart's blood

[tulip folio]

Got it, so you have learned the secret language of 'Manc', which consists of roughly 50% 'innit', 'You know what I mean?' and 'Piss off Noel, you wanker'

[fierce star]

lmao

[tulip folio]

On the topic of Lunars, how bad is it in the divide between 'good form for combat' and 'not a great form for combat'? As I remember in 2e there was a lot of 'Look, you pick your Lunar's Primary form based on stats more than thematics because the difference is absolutely stark'.

Pondering because I do have a Lunar sitting about to play some time and I remember when I looked at 2e there was a lot of 'Oh boy, sorry. That form doesn't have 15 arms or Is A Tyrant Lizard, so it's a bad warform'

[prisma sun]

A bear can pretty handily buff your combat stats to beating the shit out of a Essence 2-3 threat

Like animal stats are pretty good

They're never a Nerf at least

also Protean bonuses mean you get a lot of milage out of quickly transforming to fit your charms

[tulip folio]

In my case I was thinking a classic dog/wolf sort.

||Yes, they were Cú Chulainn inspired||

Which I worry has a bit of the issue of 'Not big enough for fancy big effects but not small enough for fancy small effects'

[prisma sun]

Funnily enough Dogs/Wolves make good generals

[tulip folio]

...ah, I was looking at a singular warrior more than a unit leader.

[prisma sun]

You'd still Do Good with that

just most of the Wolf's Protean charms are about it's Pack Hunting ability and being a predator

making it good at intimidation and warfare

Oh actually

Wolf also gets grapple bonuses

So yeah

You could make a pretty mean wolf

[tulip folio]

...do Lunars have a way to grapple with spears? Or would that mean 'be a brawl character'?

[prisma sun]

Are you fighting in wolf form or human form?

[tulip folio]

I was looking at human + big scary animal-man options. So you know, human + classic monster werewolf 😛

[prisma sun]

Ah gotcha

If you can attack with your spear with Dex a lot of those Charms synergize with being a wolf

However Deadly Beastman does not activate Protean

[tulip folio]

As you can't really have a Cu without a Warp-Spasm option. XD

[prisma sun]

ofc

[tulip folio]

...huh, Infernal Monster will likely end up just Infernal Brawl in 3e, won't it (Pondering it as it seems like the most fitting martial art for a complete berserker)? Like how how Dark Messiah ended up just Abyssal Brawl?

Which is amusing as Infernal Monster had all these repeated carveouts for 'Yes, this is a shaping effect but it expressly works with Lunar Tattoos'

It had a great charm that I loved nearly as much as Illustrative Overkill Technique.

SCREAMING MEAT SHIELD
Cost: 5m
Mins: Martial Arts 5, Essence 3
Type: Reflexive (Step 2)
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: World-Breaker Grip

The best defense is to break an enemy’s will to fight. Gorol learned this the hardest possible way when he overheard the Neverborn whisper the Great Curse and sought to integrate the lesson into Infernal Monster Style. This Charm may defend against any perceived physical attack by changing the target from the martial artist to a victim she is holding with World-Breaker Grip. The attack is resolved as if the new target were its original target and cannot be aborted. If an attacker kills a held character toward whom she has a positive Intimacy as a result of this attack redirection, the attacker loses one Willpower from despair. 

...wait, I recognise thie sutra...

3e Sidereal Presence is using Infernal Monster's Sutra!

SCRIPTURE OF THE ONE-HANDED MAIDEN
Once there was a maiden…
…who struck an iron wall until it shattered her hand.
She did not stop, though cracks spread throughout her bones.
She did not stop, though blood sprayed her eyes.
She did not stop until she shattered the wall.
“Survival is fury,” she said.

I guess Infernal Monster really isn't making a return if Sidereals already took it's sutra and made it part of their charmset. XD

[coral wraith]

Uh, how so, exactly?

Scripture of the One-Handed Maiden is the Maiden shattering the wall by shattering herself; Survival is fury, the will to fight through at any personal cost

[tulip folio]

Mostly that the scripture of the one handed maiden was the sutra for Infernal Monster.

[coral wraith]

Can you link it?

[tulip folio]

So either it won't have a Sutra any more or they'll need a new one.

[coral wraith]

Or post it, rather

[tulip folio]

That is it above. XD

That's the one from infernal monster, which is also the one that's in Sidereal Presence in 3e

[coral wraith]

Hmm, okay

[tulip folio]

As Infernal Monster's capstone 'thing' was shattering magic through fury, at cost to oneself (Hence the one-handed maiden sutra).

OATH-SHATTERING STRIKE
Cost: 60m, 6wp
Mins: Martial Arts 5, Essence 5
Type: Simple
Keywords: Blasphemy, Obvious, Sorcerous, Touch
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: One Hand Fury

The Green Sun Prince may liberate others from their ill-considered promises, though doing so is not without price. Akuma cannot learn this Charm, for its nature is metaphysically antithetical to the vows that enslave them. Oath-Shattering Strike may only be activated after flaring the runes of One Hand Fury through an activation of Infernal Monster Style. The Exalt must also know the terms of the magical oath he intends to shatter, and that oath must have been sanctified by a being with an Essence no greater than the Infernal’s own unmodified permanent rating.

The Infernal strikes the target who swore the oath with an unarmed blow. Runes of power explode around the target, depicting the terms and authority of the oath in the moments before they dissolve into emerald fire and sand. The target is freed from the oath, but the burden for breaking it falls upon the Infernal in full as if he had sworn and deliberately broken the vow. 

That 'look, they can't be higher essence than you' was 100%, expressly there for 'no, you can't free the Yozi of their surrender oath that easily'. XD

[tulip folio]

Okay, checked out the old Manual of Exalted Power: Sidereals from 2e.

Back in 2e, specific charm trees didn't have specific sutras (They just put a sutra on like every second page of the charms section but there was too few sutras for skills/there wasn't a specific association)

One Handed Maiden was in the book but it wasn't tied to to anything in particular, it was one of the 'we randomly put sutras in there'

It looks like they made it the Presence one...maybe they just missed the fact it was a Martial Art Sutra in another book?

[coral wraith]

Iunno

I'm not sure it really relates to anything in particular

[tulip folio]

Maybe. I might be overthinking it.

Sorry

[coral wraith]

It's totally okay Iki

Didn't do anything wrong

[tulip folio]

I should just stop thinking about Infernals and Infernal Stuff until they're out. As it keeps just getting me worrying about my Favorite Exalt. XD

[coral wraith]

Honestly, at this point I'd try and Trust The Process

All non solar exalted in 3e have been great

Not just that, they're playable

[tulip folio]

Yeah, it's just my worry that like the #1 thing I don't want them to do is like...turn them into Green Solars, when they had such Unique Aspects before. XD

But I'll focus on other things for now

Like working out what my Alchemical's favorite food is.

As RiRi has 'food' as one of her intimacies. XD

I feel like it's got to be Rat-On-A-Stick/Rat Kebab.

Among other reasons: One of the other PCs has a minor intimacy of fear towards rats.

And turning up with rat on a stick would cause chaos.

RiRi: "I mean, Cafeteria food is good but you've really got to try the local stalls from alleys that have fresh-cooked honey rat kebab."

[prisma sun]

They probably aren't going to make them green solars since the team that made solars isn't making them and all the new guys seem to be interested in making unique and neat splats

[tulip folio]

Bit of a stupid question: What's the downside to larger thrown/ranged weapons?

Like larger melee weapons have Less Accuracy

But that's not related to size for thrown/archery weapons.

Like what does light 'give' for Self-Bows that Composite Bows don't get?

Also there doesn't seem to...be a Heavy Thrown Weapon.

Helping the GM stat a couple of odd weapons for the Autocthon game.

[bleak hazel]

I'm pretty sure larger thrown weapons are mostly just better, yes

[tulip folio]

Okay, that makes me a bit worried about statting these weapons up and having them be too good because they're well 'Ranged' and 'Big' XD

[bleak hazel]

Also for Lunars, there are a few standout animal forms for combat (hippo, pestletail, housecat, tyrant lizard) but you can always deadly beastman it up anyway, which is very strong regardless of spirit shape

[tulip folio]

nods
So that lunar would likely not actually use their animal for combat (Since wolf apparently isn't fantastic for a single warrior with weapons) and instead use human and deadly beastman.

[bleak hazel]

it's not like most of the others are bad, it's just that in pure charop terms it's very hard to compete with the abilities on the pestletail + fifteen billion soak and hardness

[tulip folio]

Everyone knows wolf should have given extra skills at Melee. 😛

[bleak hazel]

Death Kitty is instead running around with +3 charm attack and +2 charm evasion from being small

[velvet raft]

Maybe phrase it as something more like ... paranoia?

Which can be useful when everyone is out to get you

But in most scenarios is not

Plays into old folkloric notions of "moon madness" as well

[velvet raft]

I can't recall, what's the top-end form with Berserker?

... direswine?

[bleak hazel]

No idea, but I've seen a hellboar berserker build stomp all over three poor E2 deebs

[velvet raft]

Oh, hellboar

[bleak hazel]

it was a close fight but still

Lunars can get pretty damn mean

[velvet raft]

Yeah

I like RLF

It fills my heart with joy

[bleak hazel]

Sids and Deebs both have a huge power spike at E3, where Signature charms and SMAs come online

Solaroids and Lunars get theirs, in a relative sense, at E1

then Alchemicals are more on the Sid growth curve but also just get steadily better rather than suddenly unlocking five new skill trees of nonsense

[tulip folio]

Heavy Archery

Blast Cleaner
A uniquely autothonian weapon, blast cleaners take the form of heavy metal tubes connected to a massive tank on the wearer's back. This tank is filled with gas from the Elemental Pole of Steam, allowing it to scour flesh from bones and rot from chamber walls.

Cost: ••• (in Vos-Ulos) •••• (Elsewhere in Autothonia) ••••• (In Creation)
Tags: Archery(Short), Flame, Slow, Special

Blast Cleaners require a heavy tank backpack to be used. This backpack takes as long to equip as medium armour and has a -1 Mobility penalty, which stacks with the mobility penalty of worn armour.

Highly modifiable weapons, Blast Cleaners can be adjusted by any character with at least 1 dot in craft(metalworking) or a similar skill over a few minutes, changing the water flow or reinforcing weaker pipes. Doing so grants the weapon the adjuster's choice of Bashing or Lethal, along with one of the following tags: Smashing, Chopping, Balanced, Piercing. These last until the weapon is next modified.

[tulip folio]

It's supposed to be the iconic weapon for the troops of the Autocthonian city the GM set up for his game. They're near the elemental pole of steam and thus have unusual access to supplies of water.

Special Material 

Powered (+•, Minimum •••)
Powered armour and weapons are made from alloys and wires designed to channel essence easily. With an eight hour ritual, a thaumaturge or sorcerer can align a powered weapon or armour with a Manse, allowing a mortal weilder to channel a hair of the Manse's power. While within that Manse, this object uses the statistics of its artifact counterpart. Most Metropoli have Municipal Charms that allow them to be treated as a Manse for this purpose.

Powered equipment are not artifacts and are no more durable than any other mundane weapon, the power is entirely provided by the Manse, rather than them having any inherent power of their own.

[fierce star]

Piercing should be an option too, given what pressurized heated water can do.

[tulip folio]

Fair. The intent is that it's a Dragon Sigh Wand with an extra downside (The mobility penalty/the fact it takes notable time to equip) and an extra upside (A bonus tag).

And powered is sorta an attempt to get the vibes of the old 'Autothonian characters get 3x dot value from artifacts becasue they're so mass produced that even mortals might have one' without 'Hey, you get actual artifacts everywhere'

[fierce star]

Id also note it can't be used to set fires but can put them out, given the flame tag

Also legit

[tulip folio]

I figured 'only an artifact in the place player characters are least likely to have major adventure fights' was a suitable restriction 😛

Means it's good for an Expensive Militia but not 'I didn't buy artifacts, I just bought powered non-artifacts'

[fierce star]

Makes sense

[bleak hazel]

you're almost certainly fine, weapon choice is important but not critical and the lighter thrown weapons tend to work with a bunch of martial arts the big ones don't anyway, so they'll still have a use

even for the melee weapons, it often comes down to "do you want +1 parry or +2 accuracy" with the heavy weapons left somewhat out in the cold unless you're doing something particular, like Earth Dragon with a really big stick

[tulip folio]

Poor heavy weapons 😛

[bleak hazel]

personally I am a big fan of upgrading from the traditional "one daiklaive" to "two daiklaives"

[tulip folio]

...I'm also kinda surprised that there's no non-heavy two handed weapons. XD

I'd really think 'spear' could be used two handed

[bleak hazel]

fixing that is actually why my Sid's artifact is what it is

[fierce star]

it's because two-handed is a specific rules dongle

ti gives +2 to clashes to make up for not being able to dual wield or use a shield

my alch's weapon is two handed without being heavy but it's a five-dot artifact with some bullshit going on, tbh

[bleak hazel]

dual-wielding also gives +2 to clashes, and there's nothing stopping you simply picking up a second medium sword to get that bonus

two-handed is actually worse because it penalises your attacks while grappled

[fierce star]

I'm going to guess that's in the grapple rules, not the two-handed tag rules?

[bleak hazel]

this is my current sword, although I need to neaten it up a lot since this was just me furiously scribbling

yep

this entire thing is a shameless rip-off of the two-handed sword that Michelle Yeoh uses in Crouching Tiger, but I do quite like the idea of "aha, my sword is in the cloakroom but I can parry you with it anyway, because it's my sword"

[fierce star]

lol

[bleak hazel]

4 motes per shot will very rapidly tap you out there, so it will not reliably counter Being Disarmed

[fierce star]

yeah my alch's weapon is a giant clockwork... thing that functions as a gyroscropic, chainsaw chakram but is also big enough to use as a shield, came along with a 'once there was a maiden' sutra and made my GM cackle when I pitched it to him, so

[bleak hazel]

there should be more weird weapons that work as shields

I'm not saying this because I have a Sid build that uses shield charms to reach defence 17 but I'm not not saying it because of that either

[fierce star]

It doesn't have the shield tag but instead has Special: Counts as a shield but doesn't give a damage penalty

[tulip folio]

That's actually what the sid charm does 😛

It removes the damage penalty from shields.

[bleak hazel]

yeah, Sids are better at being captain yu-shan than any other splat for some reason

[tulip folio]

Likely because someone realized that reducing the 'Primary Role of A Weapon' kinda hurts it as a weapon.

[fierce star]

Razor-Edge Between Death And Safety, Adamant Shielding Chakram (Artifact *****, Requires Autochthonian Artifice)
Medium Melee, tags: Melee, Thrown (Long), Smashing, Lethal (When used as thrown), Bashing (when used as melee), Two-Handed, Gyroscopic (Thrown), Chain-Engine (Melee)
Special: This weapon allows you to use the Full Defense action in a flurry without any attack actions in it, and counts as a Shield for martial arts styles and charms.
Thematics: The razor-edge between tick and tock, the split between seconds where decisions are made.
Hearthstone Slots: 2
Once, there was a maiden
who was afraid of her power, and what it meant to her people, and the people who would make her abuse it for their own ends.
This maiden did not know how to say no, for it was not her lot to do so; she was a servant, and she knew her place.
One day, her people needed her the most, but she was told to stand down
And instead, the maiden ran, and ran, and ran, and ran, crying diamond tears
Until she died, cold, alone, and abandoned
Just like her people did

The Razor-Edge Between Death and Safety was found by a prospecting team in the reaches near Vos-Ulos, next to the skeletal remains of a long-dead Alchemical of unknown origin. Its history is not known. It is a tightly, precisely fitted set of adamant gears, like the inside of a clock writ large. It is controlled by the hand gestures of the attuned exalt. The gears are so well fitted and precise it is impossible to tell where the movement of them begins; it normally floats a few inches off the attuned user's back, or above their head where it serves as a functional umbrella. The gears are impossibly sharp, functioning as the razor edge of a chain-engine weapon as well as the ticking gyroscopes of a gryoscopic weapon.

Evocations:
Attunning to this artifact automatically unlocks the Industrial Violence Engine and Recursive Trajectory Cut evocations, as it is a Chain-Engine and Gyroscopic weapon.

[tulip folio]

...are all shields medium or is there a Really Fucking Sad buckler somewhere going 'I don't get a parry bonus because I'm a light weapon but I do get a damage penalty because I"m a shield'?

[fierce star]

Every weapon I've seen with the Shield tag is medium

which means shields and razor parasols

(and thunderbolt shields)

[bleak hazel]

where is the Razor Parasol anyway

[fierce star]

I don't think it has a stat up anywhere but there are razor parasols in the book

I think MFS has one? Sec

hrm, no...

[bleak hazel]

you'd think Dragon-Scale Shield would buff shields, and it does, but it also works on any weapon

[fierce star]

ah, here's one in arms

[bleak hazel]

Ex3 has a Bloodborne-style dislike of shields

[bleak hazel]

not bad, a direct upgrade to the basic shield

or almost so

[fierce star]

compare a thunderbolt shield

it uh

basically is a direct upgrade

I GUESS you could argue bashing/lethal is a sidegrade but

conceable and disarming for free

[bleak hazel]

it is technically a sidegrade but you can just stunt with your lethal weapon to knock someone out

[fierce star]

basically ex3 didn't want sword and board to be the Always Correct Action, however IMO it swung too far the other way

so now it's never the correct action

[tulip folio]

Alchs kinda like shields!

[bleak hazel]

now the correct action, for certain Sidereals at least, is two boards

because you only get dual wield bonuses for using two of the same weapon

[fierce star]

lol

[bleak hazel]

bonk

[fierce star]

frankly I think we fix it most easily by just

removing the damage penalty

[tulip folio]

Light-Etched Interceptor Barrier gets a hefy boost if you're making use of shields.

[bleak hazel]

you can Full Defend without a shield

if you couldn't, Crane Style would be very sad

[tulip folio]

True but shields make it a lot better.

(Also: Why do the war fans crane style uses not have the shield tag? Their entire purpose is blocking attacks.)

[bleak hazel]

only Sids have the ability to pay 2 motes to flurry full defences with attacks and another 2 motes to remove the flurry penalty, as far as I'm aware

[bleak hazel]

war fans are light weapons even, so you want to block with the hook-sword and attack with the war fan most of the time

[tulip folio]

That baffles me as that's literally the opposite of how it's supposed to work. XD

The Artifact Shield in the Alch book looks pretty good.

[bleak hazel]

Sid Parryman: givegivegivegive

attempting to swing at Sid Parryman is now at -5

[tulip folio]

It's worse if you actually have the evocations.

[bleak hazel]

I don't really like the artifact section of the alch book, mostly because of the Potentiality Gauntlets, which break all the goddamn rules of artifact creation

hate those things

you do not put TN reduction on artifacts because people who aren't Sids keep picking them up

[tulip folio]

Energy Negation Field
Cost: 3m, 1a; Mins: Essence 1
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Uniform
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: Efficient Conversion Circuit
Prismatic Bulwark’s wielder charges the shield with her anima to project a luminous field of  resistance.

The wielder gains the benefits of light cover against an attack, or medium cover if she benefits from a full defense action.
 
Against energy-based attacks, the penalty from Prismatic Bulwark’s innate defense subtracts successes instead of penalties.

Prismatic Bullwark fucking hates people trying to shoot you with lasers. It hates them to death.

[bleak hazel]

also Universal Impact is absurdly cracked

[tulip folio]

Yeah, the Potentiality Gauntlets seem...a problem.

[upper stratus]

a potential problem

[tulip folio]

That said: I do love just how much the Prismatic Bulwark exists to let you Captain America your problems.

[bleak hazel]

because of the way it works, you almost certainly hit with all of your attacks, which are probably all smashes, adding 9-49 extra damage and then hurling someone into a wall for medium falling

[tulip folio]

'Wow, you are warping reality? I bet I can block that with my shield!'

[bleak hazel]

Sid Punchman can abuse the hell out of those things

"oh hey, it basically adds Essence^2 to your damage? my essence is 7, come at me"

[coral wraith]

not to derail the chat too much, but I was taking a look at the Lunar book again tonight and I had a quick question - what exactly is the issue with their Essence Fever?

Seems perfectly fine to me

[tulip folio]

Basicly: ID's not a fan of the focus on rage, as he doesn't feel it's thematic to Luna or Lunars.

[bleak hazel]

pigeonholes them quite heavily into Enormous Silver Rage Monster aimed directly at your choice of the Sidereals or the Realm, basically nothing else

[coral wraith]

But it doesn't say that

[tulip folio]

As Luna is herself more of a sneaky trickster

[fierce star]

Luna's not just a sneaky trickster, though that is one of his facets

[coral wraith]

Others act on longheld passions they’ve never expressed: A peasant who’s always resented her Dynastic masters mounts a campaign of sabotage and subterfuge against them; a savant who abhors slavery descends on a Guild caravan in her war-form and shatters the slaves’ manacles with her bare hands; a prince’s bastard moves to depose her hated half-sibling and take the throne.

The world is big and this can easily extend to personal vendettas as well as Realm Warmongering

If you want

The Exalted world sucks ass, you've got something to be mad at

[tulip folio]

I think part of it is also that in 2e, the focus for a Lunar exalting was focused on 'I will survive at all costs'. It was a focus on 'I will do anything it takes to survive'.

[coral wraith]

I'm not particularly putting much stock in 2e, sorry :p

[bleak hazel]

the core book is especially bad about this, and while the Lunar book does vary it up a bit it also provides very few example lunars who aren't entirely focused on killing deebs

[fierce star]

as rambled previously Luna is a survivor. They are not a being of rage; when she was placed in that divine arena against all the other nascent lunar deities, it fought them with strength and guile and cunning and savagery all in equal measure. It was not rage that won her the day, it was a drive to, above all else, be the last one standing. And he was.

[tulip folio]

My personal issue is that being angry at things is a bit generic as basicly every single exalt ever exalts while being Mad At Something. XD

You don't get many people exalting because Things Are Great

[bleak hazel]

there is the token "yeah you can do what you want" but "yeah, literally your whole exaltation is telling you Go, Kill The Usurpers" was very boring

[coral wraith]

The Lunar book literally doesn't say that though

[bleak hazel]

note that I did not post from the lunar book

[upper stratus]

the lunar book description of essence fever should pretty straightforwardly take precedence over the core book's description

[coral wraith]

you posted from the notoriously not well written core book, yes

[bleak hazel]

lunar book eases up on the specifications of the essence fever and then gives basically no examples to the contrary, which is my main problem with it

[coral wraith]

Which still uses the word Barbarian

[bleak hazel]

Many-Faced Strangers adds Sublime Danger

who is my favourite lunar

because she is basically the one published lunar elder who is not all in on maximum dragon murder

[fierce star]

There are nearly no examples of lunars who are not all in on the killing the usurpers for the crime of killing the solars. Sublime Danger is like, the one standout.

[bleak hazel]

well, flip a coin for Sids, who are probably mad but mostly at the paperwork that refuses to Make Sense

[fierce star]

there's a couple others, mirror-soul pops out ot me

[tulip folio]

My issue is sorta the same one I have with the limited amount we know of Infernals so far. 'A desire to tear shit down and destroy things is kinda the Default Exalt Experience, the fever should give spice on top of that'.

If that makes sense?

[fierce star]

also I kind of like a lot of the ex2 fluff. It wasn't great in places, but there was a spice there for lunars that ex3 lunars lack. Rough edges and sharp bits and more inspiration for games with them that weren't 'KILL DEEBS DESTROY THE REALM'

[tulip folio]

The Sidereal Essence Fever is one I really like.

[upper stratus]

2e lunars were basically doing nothing at all

[tulip folio]

As it gives a lens with which to focus the 'Well, shit is not going great now' that is the average exalting experiance.

[bleak hazel]

the Sid one is great, yeah

[fierce star]

but there were ideas there that could be used, it's not the theme's fault that the authors were shit

[bleak hazel]

Sids are the exalts who were most clearly made to do one job in particular

[upper stratus]

the theme didn't write itself

[tulip folio]

I think if I had control, I'd make the essence fever for Lunars about well...Change.

[bleak hazel]

you can really see that no matter who wins they're probably going to have a Sid around whispering in people's ears because even if you destroyed the entirety of Heaven all the newly exalted Sids are going to form their own Grand Vizier Chats

[fierce star]

then I guess i'm just fucking wron gthen

[upper stratus]

ok

[tulip folio]

You get a view of how you could change, how things around you could change etc.

[fierce star]

i'm too tired and it's too earlyf or me to argue against the world with my shitty opinions

i'm going to get some coffee and play video games

[tulip folio]

ID, take a breath and have a bit of a walk.

[bleak hazel]

I do think "rage" is a bit of a boring theme for the ultimate shapeshifters, because they're not just werewolves

[fierce star]

it just occurs to me that the only people who are like 'yeah your ideas aren't trash' when It alk about lunars are you and misc

[tulip folio]

ID, you're my best friend but I'll say this a a moderator: Take a breath and go get that coffee you said

You are doom spiraling

[fierce star]

ok

[bleak hazel]

one of the other very fun lunars is Silent Pearl, who is some form of mollusc and responded to things going badly by swimming away and taking a nap for a few centuries

she is very grumpy

[coral wraith]

No one said your ideas are trash, ID - I'm sorry if I pushed too hard but I'm not trying to snipe your thoughts down

Coffee good idea, yeah

[tulip folio]

But yeah, rather than 'rage' I'd go instead with a focus on 'Change'. Give them a moment of insight on how things could be different, perhaps in ways that others would never consider.

Have that play into the Thousand Streams Project, as a lot of lunars get a moment of 'Wait, the world could be different and it would be great!' and then spend decades trying to hammer that vision into a functional form 😛

[upper stratus]

doesn't that bump into the same thing as the 'default exalt experience' you mentioned earlier

[bleak hazel]

that is kind of the Sid one too

[tulip folio]

I don't think quite as much as the current one does. The default exalt experience isn't really 'I can see a different world, one I could achieve'

It would also play into the Survival aspect because a way to personally survive is to change Oneself.

[bleak hazel]

the one redeeming feature of Silver Rage Monster is that it isn't standing on Solar turf (very boring Drive To Do Heroics) or Sid turf ("I see it ALL!")

deebs get element-flavoured vibes instead

Abyssals are very emo, it's only Infernals that might also join the Lunars in "always angry, all the time" but we don't know their deal yet

[upper stratus]

you can't really do any cool exalt shit without affecting change upon the world until yuour essence fever cools and you become a bitter old status quo chejop kejak style guy

[tulip folio]

I refuse to believe chejop kejak ever wasn't a bitter old man.

😛

[upper stratus]

he was born 75 years old

[bleak hazel]

young Chejop is clearly Sean Connery

[coral wraith]

he definitely exalted as Dipshit Supreme

[bleak hazel]

they eventually evolved into the same hair situation

young Chejop actually got stuff done, so he may not have been quite as salty

[tulip folio]

To give Chejop Kejak some credit, he's at least honest about being a salty old man who hates solars. XD

Hopefully we won't get the same revelation about Anys Syn that 2e had. I like infernals and that was still a shitty revelation.

[bleak hazel]

to be fair that entire plot was abysmal and made very little sense

that ability doesn't even work that way

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah but unlike most of the shitty Return of Redness revelations, it pre-dates the Redness Book.

[bleak hazel]

also Infernal Monster is presumably now Infernal Brawl, so she can't learn it regardless

[tulip folio]

'Anys Syn has a standing promice to the Yozi' was in the infernal book, though they pushed it way too far in Redness

[bleak hazel]

Anys Syn's nuclear first strike right hook remains hers only

[tulip folio]

Actually, no. 3e, keep the standing promice but tell us that Lieger ruined the plans by spending it already on 'hey, full power duel. Lets do this'

[fierce star]

Sorry for snapping. I'm running on not nearly enough sleep due to having been at work for 48 hours. It is mildly frustrating for most of the discussion against my lunar opinions to be in the form of 'okay but why though, lunars are better than they've ever been' or like, 'but your ideas don't make sense and aren't really viable in terms of exalted fluff', etc, etc, instead of like... Maybe I'm just being too defensive but a lot of it seems like 'well, ex3 isn't ex2 so it's the best we can hope for' in regards to lunars. Stuff like outright discarding anything in ex2 as not important to the discussion, etc.

[tulip folio]

Like he's a DBZ character excited to have a Real Foe

[bleak hazel]

I am not entirely sure he wouldn't lose that, purely because she knows Every Sidereal Martial Art and there are some really good anti-doomoid buttons in some of those

[fierce star]

When it was ex2 lunars that like... a lot of ideas in there were what sold me on exalted in the first place, even if the authors never went anywhere with the themes or ideas presented.

so lunars are something very close to my heart and I really want to expand on the themes and ideas that hooked me in back when I wasn't a bitter old RPG grognard

[tulip folio]

True but it would increase the chance we get art of the duel and it would be really cool 😛

[bleak hazel]

then again the green sun boy scout doesn't have 3e rules and when he shows up he's presumably going to be the Infernal book's version of FAFL or Syn - one character raid boss

the Lunar book is kind of trying to put MHS in that role but he's a lot less mean

at least if he doesn't have an elite battlegroup to buff with his nonsense war charms

[tulip folio]

I would laugh my ass off if they give him full raid boss stats but keep the 2e 'If you manage to make him bleed, he'll withdraw and compliment you', with the assumption that the stats provided are 'You're trying to get the win by making him bleed'

Rather than like 'You're actively invested in ending Malfeas' primary soul and fucking up the entire cosmology again'

[bleak hazel]

there also isn't a Reclamation this time around so there's not really the same implication that every possible thing you might owe a demon is going to be cashed in right at the same time

there's even a Sid craft charm that lets you do trades with demons where you let them out of hell jail for a bit in exchange for nice things

[fierce star]

If my set of more calm complaints above make sense? Again, I am sorry for snapping.

[tulip folio]

I also feel like they're taking a lighter take on demons overall in 3e. Like the Big Statted Third Circle Demon we have right now is a Nice Person (In her own way)

[bleak hazel]

"Hey, Ligier, if I let you go on sabbatical next Calibration, can I get a cool sword?" is a deal you can make

[tulip folio]

There seems less 'Demons are actively looking for a chance to fuck creation up' and more 'Demons have their own desires and goals and sometimes that aligns with you'

[bleak hazel]

although E5 Sid Crafter can just tell the world to make them a cool sword

[tulip folio]

If that makes sense?

[bleak hazel]

so maybe ask for something else

[tulip folio]

I'm biased and can't comment on that one too much but they make sense to me.

[bleak hazel]

"this is my demon sword, I got it as a bonus after I let Ligier out to go scare the hell out of some deebs that were annoying me"

"pay no attention to what else happened that week"

Sidereals! no sense of right or wrong

[bleak hazel]

when you get falafel low he enters super mode for the rest of the scene but also starts trying to withdraw, to encourage you to drive him back and then come back for the final boss fight when everything isn't exploding

Ligier might work on similar principles

[tulip folio]

Also: If Ligier doesn't have a way to turn a grapple into a dance, I call nonsense 😛

I demand my demons dance!

[velvet raft]

Doesn't Ligier hate dance

Like he's specifically embarassed about Malfeas dancing

[tulip folio]

Malfeas hates dance but Ligier is everything Malfeas both wishes he was and represses abut himself.

[velvet raft]

I thought he was the part of Malfeas who was down on Malfeas about dance

[tulip folio]

He dislikes the ecstatic revel because he thinks it's undignified

But as I understand it, he likes dance in general

Just thinks uncontrolled, pure id dancing isn't cool

[velvet raft]

I remember he's one of the top martial artists anywhere

[tulip folio]

He's one of the top...basicly everythings. Being basicly Malfeas' messy, needy love letter to UCS and all. XD

'I'm totally over UCS. My new favourite spirit is so much better and definitely not picked because I thought with a dye job they'd look like my ex'

(I'm sorry to say but Malfeas' voice in my mind is Bill Dauterive)

[bleak hazel]

yeah, this is in fact why I call him the Green Sun Boy Scout

[coral wraith]

Yeah afaik Ligier is functionally one of, if not the most powerful individual entity in the setting

[bleak hazel]

best fighter, best smith, very charismatic, ego the size of malfeas

[coral wraith]

He is just Better Than You

[tulip folio]

He smiles, hearts flutter and geiger counters crackle.

[bleak hazel]

also going through HDNP and I find it fun that the third circle demon who is a wall made of snakes is willing to add little snakey crenellations

this is my new castle, she's very friendly

[tulip folio]

'Don't worry mortals, standing on the Snake Wall is entirely safe!'

... @fierce star...is the reason you say Sion is an Infernal is because she acts like Ligier...

[bleak hazel]

she also has mastery for all of Snake Style, which.... yeah fair enough

I thnk she has enough snakes for that

[tulip folio]

I like that she can just Hand Out Snake Familiars.

[bleak hazel]

I really want the rainbow snake familiar

[tulip folio]

I wonder how many dots that would be

[coral wraith]

Legitimately, one would hope so

[fierce star]

Also yes, iki.

[bleak hazel]

the tiny snake has Essence 5 mega venom charms, I think it doesn't really fit in the usual dot system

Familiar N/A

[coral wraith]

Sorry I just read this, yes they make sense, apologies if I've come off as hostile

[fierce star]

honestly not any more so than any other internet arguement, just I was more prickly than usual this morning due to extenuating circumstances, and like, a general... well, most people here disagree with my takes on lunars, lol.

[tulip folio]

Clearly you should go talk to CD, who will agree with anything you say as long as you preface it with 'Lunars can be catgirls' 😛

[fierce star]

lol

[bleak hazel]

oh hey, there is a silencing ability in Ex3, it's a wyld panther

two dot familiar, also a mount

[tulip folio]

Interesting

[bleak hazel]

giant hedgehog

the animals and wyld creatures in HDNP are all great

[bleak hazel]

oh there are many good ghosts as well

including knockoff house of leaves and various kinds of Ghost Dog

Ghost Dogs are essence 3 ghosts who would be easy to bind but are also 3-dot familiars, so I think binding half a dozen of them as a battlegroup of Good Boys would probably qualify as cheating

[tulip folio]

What's the name of the Ghost Dogs?

[bleak hazel]

Barrow Hound

actually they may not be ghosts, they are "neither living nor quite dead"

doppelgangers definitely are ghosts, though, so I may summon some of those

[tulip folio]

...that's a Barghest. XD

[bleak hazel]

it even says so, yes

the art in HDNP is mostly very good but I must admit this one looks faintly absurd

[tulip folio]

Lies

[tulip folio]

Look at this Good Boy. This is not Hideous 3

[bleak hazel]

yeah, they're great

I want one

[upper stratus]

this would go hard if johnny hundredheads was in any way reacting to the incoming attack

[tulip folio]

I kinda hope those faces are Kickstarter Backers. That is the only thing that would make me like the art.

[bleak hazel]

Keregost may perform two attack actions and one Parry without suffering any flurry penalties this round what the fuck is a parry action

[tulip folio]

...am I interpreting this correctly in that an Allied Battlegroup would mean these guys have 3 Autosuccesses on attacks as that's at least 3 guys?

[bleak hazel]

depends if you go by videogame rules "that's one entity" or sane rules "yeah that's three ghosts"

I don't think I can justify Familiar 9 for my abyssal but I would like three of them

[tulip folio]

I am dangerously tempted to replace some of my backgrounds for my Alch with one and have everyone go 'Holy shit, what is that? No, not the ghost bit. A Dog, you say?'

[upper stratus]

parrying is technically an action it' s just reflexive. there's no flurry penalty for it so that doesn't make sense

i can only assume they meant full defense

[tulip folio]

These various ghosts are all summonable by Summon Ghost, right? Not just Generic Ghosts, right?

[bleak hazel]

summon ghost has to summon human ghosts, but yes, you can get lots of them

the Shadow Circle binding spell is slightly less powerful than a regular summoning but allows you to bind things like ghost ships or those chains covered in souls or whatever

also, I think this is the best eclipse charm I've seen in ages and it's on the ghost deeb servant of an older ghost deeb who has nothing anywhere near as good

this is cheaper than +2 parry from excellencies and gives you a nice bit of soak

[fierce star]

holy shit I want it

[velvet raft]

That’s strong

[bleak hazel]

starting to wonder if my Abyssal should be a Moonshadow instead of a Daybreak because it looks like I'd get good use out of Eclipse Oath + Eclipse Charms

daybreak powers are also pretty slick though

[tulip folio]

Note to self when hit essence 2 and can pick up Eclipse charms via an Alch charm: Obtain Fabulous Hair.

[bleak hazel]

do Alchs have hair?

as a rule, anyway, I assume they can do the classic perturabo cable dreadlocks if desired

[tulip folio]

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/42e95c01-0b2a-46b1-bb72-fa6e009d92cb/d1smlas-a83a8742-8550-49fa-99b5-07c2873fe899.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzQyZTk1YzAxLTBiMmEtNDZiMS1iYjcyLWZhNmUwMDlkOTJjYlwvZDFzbWxhcy1hODNhODc0Mi04NTUwLTQ5ZmEtOTliNS0wN2MyODczZmU4OTkuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.1TbEznaksjS1__Z-ny108eo6hl_SEWfYWKCbcTxgKqQ

Yep, see Mr Silver over there on the right

[fierce star]

Alchemicals can run the gamut of appearance from 'literally a robot or golem' to 'just a dude with some cybernetics' per art

the orichalcum iconic has hair too, and so does the starmetal one under her hat per ex2 comics and some chapter fiction iirc

[bleak hazel]

soulmetal is more Dredd than I imagined

I knew they were pretty dredd

[tulip folio]

He is both pretty and dredd

You will note how chunky his shoes are. This is to let him actually be taller than the people's trying to intimidate. 😛

Without his armour he's basicly MGS2 Raiden, so I assume he's got a lot of hair.

https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/7d076ff4-e089-434a-aea3-1de5927f7ce8/dimigrr-975ac705-d63a-46a5-a220-c21caa682f07.jpg/v1/fill/w_1280,h_1759,q_75,strp/metal_gear_solid_2__raiden_by_menaslg_dimigrr-fullview.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7ImhlaWdodCI6Ijw9MTc1OSIsInBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzdkMDc2ZmY0LWUwODktNDM0YS1hZWEzLTFkZTU5MjdmN2NlOFwvZGltaWdyci05NzVhYzcwNS1kNjNhLTQ2YTUtYTIyMC1jMjFjYWE2ODJmMDcuanBnIiwid2lkdGgiOiI8PTEyODAifV1dLCJhdWQiOlsidXJuOnNlcnZpY2U6aW1hZ2Uub3BlcmF0aW9ucyJdfQ.arvW0IU4ECfaCxy17vj4RFqfkpT7BmoIKmBsE6rMv2Y

Like for all his 'Darth Vader Judge Dredd' vibes, he's so bad at being a crushing boot.

[bleak hazel]

oh that's in armour, I assumed that was just how he rolled

robot twink was not what I was expecting

[fierce star]

yeah he's explicitly a hot twink. With seduction charms installed.

[tulip folio]

Nah, it's actually a plot point that he's both A) Very human looking outside the armour B) Very pretty. The One Tier Movement has been infiltrated by him so he can assassinate their leader.

He immediately fell in love with her.

[fierce star]

Like

[tulip folio]

He's bad at his job

[fierce star]

I think defining intimacy tier, he has stats in alchs I think lemme check

so bad

[bleak hazel]

my Abyssal explicitly does not have hair, despite being very pretty

[fierce star]

okay he doesn't

[bleak hazel]

he looks extremely elegant unless his anima's at max, in which case the play of the light makes his skin go from ivory (figurative) to ivory (literal)

[tulip folio]

Most people who bump into the Soulsteel Caste Dreadful Adjudicator of Law recall little more than his massive frame, his burning crimson gaze, and how quickly they got out of his way. The Sentinel speaks only when he has to, usually to utter a warning or demand surrender. He follows the letter of the law, and expects everyone she meets to do the same: no leniency, no loopholes. Without his armor, he’s a slender youth with bone-white skin, short pale hair, and empty crimson eyes. Adjudicator’s used this beautiful appearance to infiltrate a cell of the One Tier Movement, posing as a clerk, Janiss. He’s gathered more than enough information to bring the cell down, but he’s fallen in love with its leader, Harad, who isn’t aware of Janiss’s other life as a Champion. Adjudicator sometimes wonders if he can make a life somewhere else, away from Gulak and the One Tier Movement, with just himself and Harad. 

Sorry, he's got short hair.

[bleak hazel]

he's called "Dreadful Adjudicator of Law"

get this man for copyright

[next delta]

I like how the Orichalcum alch has cool shades for eyes

[tulip folio]

I'm shocked the iconic Estasian Alch isn't called Endlessly Stamping Boot or something.

That said, their main one isn't much better.

[fierce star]

Aesthetics or Dragoon?

[tulip folio]

The Moonsilver Caste Singularly Decisive Dragoon is drunk on martial glory. A haughty warrior with shimmering silver skin, they descend on opponents with liquid grace. Freshly Exalted, Dragoon has already made a name for themselves for leading Militat in ambush raids and rescuing soldiers when operations have gone awry. To keep their star rising, Dragoon has begun to run false flag operations, committing small-scale sabotage and attacks just obvious enough to provoke nations into hiring the Militat for reprisal. When Dragoon requests an assignment to such contracts, why would the Militat refuse them? Dragoon also works clandestinely with high-ranking exceptors within his expeditionary force, using their authority to approve small-scale assignments to offer other nations contracts that will provoke their own rivals into conflict. Dragoon publicly espouse the unity, but none truly know the nature of their beliefs beyond bloodlust.

Dragoon

[fierce star]

lmao

[tulip folio]

Like this is some 'Nazi with a Dueling Scar and a noble title' level of 'Asshole you wanna see punched'

[bleak hazel]

I wish dueling scars didn't connotate "massive nazi" because they do make for good character moments

I stuck one on a Water Caste bureaucrat was the one indication that pleasant uncle deeb who does a little bit of corruption was not in fact a giant pushover

[tulip folio]

Oh right, we also have the Gulag City.

Rekad, Necessity’s Bulwark
The Estasian nation chamber slopes downwards to an escarpment overlooking a desolated stretch of Reaches, where volatile demiurge lines converge atop a blasted lightless field. Here stands grim Rekad, all that holds the door to Estasia and anchors the nation’s geomancy. The soulsteel metropolis is an angular thicket of spiraling towers and boxy lithic buildings, ever lashed by foul weather. Forges are cooled by the waterfall of precipitation that roars down off the escarpment roar at all hours, their wan red glow the only light except for when lightning crashes above.

Centuries of war and stripmining in this stretch of Estasia’s Reaches nearly incited a calamity during Estasia’s Long Without, forestalled only when the Sentinel Grim Reckoning’s Advent underwent the metropolitan ascension to anchor the haywire demiurge lines with her Geomantic Flux Attenuators. But the Municipal Charm only works so well. Local machine spirits are prone to going berserk, and the complex mechanical wards connected to the Attenuators on the plain require regular maintenance to preserve balance. Moreso than guarding a vulnerable opening into Estasia, preserving these wards is why Rekad exists.

Rekad’s inhabitants are a grim folk, respected but unenvied. The city is overpopulated, filled with political prisoners sentenced to dangerous penal labor in the forges or maintaining the wards. Underprovisioned and over-policed, the city faces constantly worsening crime, riots, and dissidence, exacerbated by the cruelty of penal Dust Battalions returning home from their ranging. And hidden under the waterfall is said to hide one of the secret soulforges that creates the Half-Souled (p. XX). Rumor says that one stalks Rekad’s alleys as a terror in the shadows, having escaped the Militat’s control.

[bleak hazel]

does lux still have his thing of "one of my component bits was once a Solar, so I'm basically a Lawgiver, right" on top of the stomping?

[fierce star]

water aspect bureaucrats make the best 'gently suggest perhaps this character is not to be fucked with' aspect tbh

thank god no, at least not textually

[tulip folio]

They don't mention it, likely to avoid making Solars the focus of one of the big alchemicals.

I do also like that the statted up Alchs have a fair bit of personality to them, really pushing back at the 'robot' thing.

[bleak hazel]

I knew the giant rat that makes all of the rules was in Autocthonia somewhere

[fierce star]

I mean

that's the skittering... horde?

[bleak hazel]

every time I get into the Alch book I start going "man, I want to bounce Sids off these incredibly earnest robots"

[fierce star]

Scurrying Nation, sorry

[bleak hazel]

I bet a decent Chosen of Endings could get at least one solid "what the fuck" out of their alchemical circlemate per story

[bleak hazel]

either from brutal self-psychosurgery or conscripting nearby pot plants into the bureau of destiny

OK I am loving all the autobot lore snippets

I wasn't originally a big autocthonia fan but 3e alchs have really charmed me so far

[tulip folio]

I'm normally not a fan of rules and fluff intermingling but this one I kinda love

One of the first circle machine spirits.

Little floating geometric memory shapes that are incredibly addicted to electricity, as it gets them drunk as a skunk

[tulip folio]

I really like drones. They're when a Machine Spirit and a Human are both hurt, so they meld together to survive.

They're less human than they were but since this is Autocthon, not the Borg, they're more of a melding than 'the human subsumed to the machine'

[bleak hazel]

ah, so that's how you get your god-blooded equivalents

[tulip folio]

They're very...Deep Space Nine Trill/Symbiote pairing.

The example one is nice.

Jovan Kash, Prophet of the Reaches
Ten years ago, the Nuradi lector Jovan secluded himself from civilization, becoming a sacred hermit of the Reaches near the Sea of Oil. There he encountered the damaged machine spirit Kash, one of the silver kraken that sift impurities from the Sea’s oil. Kash took the wounded spirit into himself, and together they became something new.

United as one, Jovan Kash now wanders the Reaches, occasionally appearing to an Octet settlement or tunnel folk clan to warn of an impending ecological crisis, whether caused by human action or the functioning Autochthon’s abstruse subprocesses. Subministers sometimes call on him for his counsel, or to ferry their messages as a courier along his travels through the Reaches. He’s often associated with the emanations of the Divine Minister Ku, his spiritual kin, and other subministers aren’t always happy to see him or quick to trust him.

Jovan Kash might be mistaken for a human, but for the oily footprints he leaves wherever he walks The spirit Kash’s divine nature also manifests itself in the drone’s power extend his limbs outward like oily tendrils. The drone’s personality balances Jovan’s optimism and Kash’s cynical, judgmental nature. His manner seems calm, or even placid, but this falls away when he tells stories, his quick-witted mortal self rising to the surface for a moment.

Oh and there's stats for a new animal form for Lunars.

Rats!

[bleak hazel]

I wonder if they're as meta as cats

[tulip folio]

Let me grab the stats though I doubt it

Rat
Rats are ubiquitous throughout Autochthonia’s habitable zones, though Rat-Slaying Electrification Grids suppress urban populations in many metropoli. Some Autochthonian see them as vermin, though some in more prosperous nations keep them as pets. Many tunnel folk use trained rats to seek out veins of nutrient paste, and the animal is often ascribed significance in a clan’s culture, folklore, or religion.

Essence: 1; Willpower: 3; Join Battle: 5 dice
Health Levels: −0/−1/−2/−4/Incap.
Actions: Climbing: 7 dice; Gnawing: 5 dice; Senses: 8 dice (see Keen Nose);
Stealth: 7 dice (see Tiny Creature).

Resolve 2, Guile 1

Combat
Attack (Bite): 4 dice (Damage 3L; 5L against enemies of equal or smaller size)
Attack (Claw): 6 dice (Damage 1L; 3L against enemies of equal or smaller size)
Combat Movement: 7 dice
Evasion: 3 (see Tiny Creature); Parry: 1
Soak/Hardness: 1/0

Special Abilities
Terrifying Swarm: Rat battle groups inflict a −2 penalty on rolls by enemies within close range.

Merits
Keen Nose: Double 9s on scent-based Perception rolls.
Tiny Creature: +2 Evasion against larger foes’ attacks. Larger characters subtract two successes from Awareness rolls against rats.
Discerning Scent (Latent): Double 8s on scent-based Perception rolls to detect a specific substance. This Merit can be taught multiple times.

That said: Rat Battle Groups are likely pretty fancy

You also get some variants that can make them scarier.

A Variety of Rats
Several unique rat subspecies exist in Autochthonian rat. Larger species, like Kamek’s Ein rats and Trantec rats (p. XX), don’t have the Tiny Creature Merit. They gain an additional −1 and −2 health level and +3 soak. Aggressive species, like Muvisni rats, Rabla rats, and gremlins add +2 on attack rolls and +3 raw withering damage.

A Rabla Rat is 6 dice with 6L or 8 dice with 4L

[bleak hazel]

OK, they're better defensively than cats

if battlegrouped, though

E5 lunar battlegroup of pure rats might be quite strong

they don't have the +3 charm accuracy that makes cats so incredibly hard to mote tap

[tulip folio]

Oh whoops. Missed some of the varients without specific mechanical rules.

Glow Rats: These bioluminescent rats are prized by tunnel folk.
Honey Rats: Unique to Sova, these rats feed on exotic chemicals and convert them to a slightly acidic honey-like substance. Extracted by syringe, it’s a rare delicacy.
Productivity Rats: These small, docile rats serve as factory mascots to bolster morale, especially among child laborers.
Gremlin Rats: These corrupted, biomechanical mutants pose a threat in large numbers, which are sometimes amassed by gremlin machine spirits. In addition to the increased traits above, they often have a number of techno-organic mutations.

[bleak hazel]

actually, Rabla rat lunar gets almost all of the benefit of being a cat, +2 instead of +3, and gets a bunch of extra damage for it

Death Ratty is a very solid sidegrade to Death Kitty

you also don't have to buy a Latent for it

[tulip folio]

I could see Discerning Scent being an interesting Latent to make use of.

As it's very open in what it can detect.

As long as it's a substance.

[bleak hazel]

very expensive for One Substance, though

also a fan of the Productivity Rats

[tulip folio]

Yeah, more a thing for 'You trained the animal' than 'you bought it for a lunar'

Alch: "My rat can smell soulsteel"
Abyssals: "...shit."

[bleak hazel]

OK, now I have to make Death Rat Lunar

[tulip folio]

Somehow I doubt you'd manage to convince a GM that 'Gremlin rats are a type of rat, my lunar can turn into it'. XD

[bleak hazel]

sure, but "aggressive rat subspecies"?

I bet I can swing that

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah, Angry Rat is 100% an option

Important Question: Can you use martial arts in animal forms?

[bleak hazel]

no

[tulip folio]

As you totally should be able to use Rat Style in Rat Form

[bleak hazel]

extremely banned

only Brawl

[tulip folio]

Got it, Rats can't use Rat Style.

False Advertising!

I suppose the Third Circle Snake Demon can only use Snake Style when Not A Snake. XD

Which is just unfair!

[tulip folio]

Actually, on that topic: Does that include Deadly Beastman form? Or just Actual Animal Form?

[bleak hazel]

deadly beastman can use both martial arts and regular weapons, which is the main advantage over turning into a hippo or similar

[tulip folio]

Animals can't use weapons? I have multiple dark souls bosses that would argue otherwise 😛

[bleak hazel]

you need either Claws of the Silver Moon or Wood Dragon's Claw

WDC has the major benefit of being able to stick whatever tags you like onto it

there is nothing stopping death rat from steadily biffing a deeb to death with his Strength 8-equivalent rat fists, though

OK, new charop challenge - if I don't take Unusual Hide or Claws of the Silver Moon, can I still beat up ragara with a perfectly normal rat

Cainan probably not, he's got too many clash bonuses

[bleak hazel]

Lunar vs high ranking deeb if the Lunar actually tries is "lunar goes bear or tyrant grapple build, picks up deeb, eats deeb immediately unless deeb can reflexively clash the grapple attempt" but smaller shapes are a bit more interesting

[warped ore]

https://tenor.com/view/holy-grail-killer-rabbit-knights-of-the-round-table-monty-python-king-arthur-gif-21516551

(Not a rat but same principle)

[velvet raft]

I'm getting D&D 3.5 flashbacks to cat vs commoner

[next delta]

How big are these default-statline rats?

[velvet raft]

These are actually Fortitude Rats from The Far Roofs, the'yre two feet tall and have swords

[prisma sun]

Using all of my charms to summon a Might 3 Rat Battlegroup

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DugpgEPcLPM

[bleak hazel]

E5 lunars can actually turn into a Size 3 battlegroup of Lunar rats

Sids can concievably reach size 4 but it requires some real bullshit (two nearly maxed SMAs)

[prisma sun]

But they can't be rats

[bleak hazel]

no

they can be Space Marines though

[prisma sun]

inferior

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jggWXoB8ZKc

[tulip folio]

How is 17 mote-free soak for a character?

[coral wraith]

Very good, afaik

That's artifact heavy +5 stam + 1

[tulip folio]

...odd pondering.

Can you use unarmed styles while holding a weapon?

Like if an unarmed style is about Kicks, can you use it while you've got a blade in-hand?

[prisma sun]

Yeah

[tulip folio]

I was looking at Jubilant Battle Proposition for a swordfighter.

3m for +5 dice (Performance) dice on a join battle + that join battle is treated as an inspire.

And from there, go with swordplay. Also gives her an Emergency Melee Option in case she's without her sword, as Shining Point can't be used unarmed, unlike most martial arts.

Is that too silly?

[fierce star]

I wouldn't say so

[tulip folio]

I'm going through a few martial arts sorta trying to find ones who's starting charms are the Most Useful to someone who doesn't actually want to fight in that style that much. XD

And Swaying Grass seems decent.

I suppose I could instead grab Violet Bier of Sorrows Style, as that's a style that can use swords and unarmed so it would be better (Though Jubilant Battle Proposition is cooler), as I could go deep in it and it would help swordplay, not just being backup option + utility

[coral wraith]

Throne Shadow!

It's a little bit of an investment, but actionless Defend Other is like

crazy

[tulip folio]

It does look pretty cool

Having a Training Charm in martial arts is amusing

[coral wraith]

That's a very fun one

[tulip folio]

And another player just called picking up Throne Shadow 'Becoming Martial Arts Mary Poppins'

[coral wraith]

lmfao

[tulip folio]

Defining: "My mother will die." (Principle), Wun Ja (Indebted Respect)
Major: "The sound when you beg for your lives is what soothes my heart" (Principle), Ice Sculptures (Phobia), Strong Opponents (Excited Joy), "Winter will always become Spring" (Principle)
Minor: Horses(Love), Snowfall(Calming), The Bureau of Heaven (Grumpy Distaste), Gold Faction (Intrigued), Immaculate Cult (Boring), "I love making an entrance." (Principle)

How's this seem for a Sidereal's intimacies?

[prisma sun]

Looks dope

[dense verge]

good!

[tulip folio]

I tried to give her a range of stuff beyond just 'My mother is evil and I need to kill her'. XD

[tulip folio]

...what do people think of the Default Charm for Autocthonian Chainsword Artifacts?

Industrial Violence Engine
Cost: 6m; Mins: Essence 1
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Dual
Duration: One scene
Prerequisites: None
The wielder revs the engine of her weapon until the blade is a roaring blur, ready to bite through armor and flesh.

The chain-engine weapon revs to life, with the following effects:
• It gains the Chopping tag if it doesn’t already have it. If it already had the tag, the wielder adds a bonus die on attack rolls for chopping attacks.
• Withering attacks with it add an additional die of post-soak damage.
• Decisive chopping attacks against enemies with lower Initiative add up to (Strength/2, rounded up) extra successes as dice on the damage roll. If it deals enough damage to increase the target’s wound penalty, he also suffers a crippling penalty equal to his new base wound penalty on all physical rolls for the rest of the scene.
• The wielder suffers a –2 penalty to Stealth rolls from the sound of the weapon’s engine. 

[prisma sun]

I feel the penalty on stealth should be bigger

[tulip folio]

Well, I didn't invent it. It's from the book (It was just split over two pages so it didn't screenshot nicely) 😛

[next delta]

They should keep the penalty as is, but with a rider that people can still hear the chainsword, you just can't tell where in the scene the character is

[tulip folio]

The effects seem pretty solid for a scene-long effect, though I'm not experianced enough at 3e to be a good judge on it.

Though the one for Lightsabers seems better (Possibly becasue it's effects are simpler and cheaper and thus convince my brain they're good more easily).

Do you think Essence Core Ignition/Treating as a beamclave would be fitting for a weapon where the blade is purely elemental? I'm thinking a sword where the blade is water formed into ice.

So most of the time it's just the handle but if you use essence core ignition, a blade of ice forms.

[next delta]

That seems fine. Though fully Exalted maximalist design would be to give it bespoke rules 😛

[tulip folio]

Yes but that sounds difficult to balance 😛

[next delta]

Oh, I guess an advantage of chainswords is you don't have to use Industrial Violence Engine to use it as an artifact weapon

[tulip folio]

Yeah, the violence engine is just an Extra Bit

While Essence Core Ignition is needed to beamklave

My thoughts on thematics is that it's the blade of a northern clan that was destroyed by the Lover. Drawing on themes of 'Winter' and 'Freedom', as they did what most other clans would have thought was unthinkable and chose destruction over bowing to the Lover's philosophy.

Unshackled Spirit Oath
Cost: 5m; Mins: Essence 2
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Resonant
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: <Some Essence 1 Charm>
Even with the Yun Clan slain and their patron god shattered, these oaths of freedom remain, resisting Oblivion itself.

The wielder can use her Parry to defend against Spell and Shaping effects. If the effect could normally be opposed with a roll or static value, the wielder uses her Parry instead. Against unrolled effects, the opposing character rolls a dice pool of the Storyteller’s choice.

The wielder gains an additional +1 non-Charm Parry against Shaping effects or spells that would restrict the wielder, or that would attack her mind or soul.

Resonant: With an Essence 3 repurchase, the wielder can pay a one-Willpower surcharge to extend this Evocation’s duration to one scene.

Slight adjustment of an existing evocation.