Exalted

[bleak hazel]

I've been thinking about this for a while, because Sid Brawl has three really nice Versatile defensive charms in there but my build has both hands taken up by swords

but Iron Boots do exist and it seems reasonable that you can in fact wear boots and hold things simultaneously

[fierce star]

There is a game i've read recently that didn't let you wield boots and a sword at the same time, 'because the equipment slot is the weapon slot, not the hands slot'

it's expressly riffing off of like, SNES/PS1 era JRPGs though so it's somewhat more sense making there

[bleak hazel]

yeah, I'm in a fabula ultima game at the moment and occasionally I do wonder why I can't wear a gas mask and a necklace simultaneously, but that's the nature of the medium

mostly, high essence Sids just really want this button

[tulip folio]

Hahahah

Pity I'm Melee, not Brawl.

Still very funny

It's a great ability and like one of the only True Perfect Defences remaining

[bleak hazel]

it's also really cheap

[tulip folio]

It's also just funny

[bleak hazel]

which is good when a fight's gone long and you're wrestling back and forth and someone puts all the juice they've been saving up into a big decisive

you just go "no" and gain a massive tempo advantage at the cost of the local lollipop lady

[tulip folio]

It's likely bad form to find a trivial person with multiple hearts, isn't it? 😛

[bleak hazel]

"so I met this guy from Gallifrey Province....."

[tulip folio]

There's also a lot of paperwork if you pick a non-mortal.

[bleak hazel]

it's actually cheaper than Seven Shadows Evasion

or Heavenly Guardian Defence

[tulip folio]

'Look, he was an unemployed god'

'He never had stats'

[bleak hazel]

the life of a trivial character is worth exactly 3 motes

[tulip folio]

Is there anything that can interrupt/stall that 'Solar Throws Out One Billion Attacks at Tick 1, before anyone gets a turn'? I know 'being able to move' doesn't help, as they can bypass 'I escape all the way to extreme range' somehow.

[bleak hazel]

I wish I knew

against a single target they are probably using big flurry energy and Invincible Fury of the Dawn is locked to decisive only so theoretically you could gate a lot of it with sufficiently high Hardness

being at long range on turn 1 is a decent idea because the thing that skips the initiative order only moves you one range band, it doesn't let you trigger all the solar "I rush you instantly from extreme range" athletics bullshit

[tulip folio]

...I'm reminded of the D&D 4e Gensai, where Void Gensai have a thing that exalts would kill for in this nonsense.

Effect: Until the start of the user's next turn, the user ceases to exist. During this time, the user can take no actions and has no line of sight or line of effect to any other creature, and no other creature has line of sight or line of effect to the user. At the start of the user's next turn, the user reappears in the square of his or her choice within 3 squares of the square the user left.

'Fuck off, I'm out. I don't exist. Have your fucking turn'

[bleak hazel]

the important thing is to never try to dodge solars by playing keepaway at close range or above them because they have this bullshit

[tulip folio]

Oh no, please not Multiplicative Scaling. Multiplicative Scaling is bad for games.

[bleak hazel]

it also has no reset, so if you try to flurry break with a jump they'll hit you with it, fall down to the ground, hit it again.... and you get air juggled

[coral wraith]

silence solaroid. chain grapple

[bleak hazel]

oh this isn't the worst one

this is the worst one

[fierce star]

Fabula Ultima wasi n fact the game I was referring to above, misc, lol

[tulip folio]

...oh no

[fierce star]

also jesus christ these stack don't they

wait no

decisive and withering only thank god

[upper stratus]

oh how silly! looks like they forgot the apocryphal keyword on that supplement charm. haha

[tulip folio]

7m, 3i, 1 WP: Fucking Kill A Guy. Immediately reset it becuase when would you not be using your multistrike on a notable foe?

[bleak hazel]

honestly you want them to stack because your answer is "don't get hit" anyway, so you you want them to stack absolutely everything onto one decisive which you then counter

sadly you cannot use Dead Spouse Defence on RBA, decisive only

megabuffed join battle into Thunderbolt Attack Prana -> Heaven Sword Flash is the "fuck you get TPKed" move, because it effectively turns your alpha strike into a full init decisive against anyone within close range

[velvet raft]

Sounds like tempting the pattern spiders

[bleak hazel]

if you absolutely want your Dawn to be able to oneshot an entire hearth of five shikari and remove all tension from the game, go with that bullshit

[fierce star]

I will bribe them with debate, pattern flies and Cool Kungfu Moves

[velvet raft]

The thing with RBA is go look and see what it's a prerequisite for, I'll wait

[fierce star]

(is the ex3 metaphysic-rules behind stunting still 'pattern spiders get bored and play favorites with cool people'? I know we're far away from the era of 'game rules as setting physics' by the time of ex3 but I always was tickled by that fluff)

[bleak hazel]

stunt rules are extremely out-of-universe at this point

[velvet raft]

The metaphysics behind in-combat mote regen being much higher are that, though

[tulip folio]

...with how damn fast this beatdown happens, I think the Alch's Ultimate Defense isn't going to do shit to a solar trying this. XD

[velvet raft]

Fate/spirits/the pattern spiders pay more attention to cool fight scenes

[tulip folio]

As it gives you Hardness: Fucking Yes but requires you to have init first.

[bleak hazel]

you'll have initiative, this doesn't happen before join battle

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah, I'm just not sure you'll have enough to have the hardness halt the solar. XD

[bleak hazel]

(they instead use Awakening Eye, the only solar awareness charm anyone cares about, to get a huge join battle)

[tulip folio]

I'm starting to think Solars got shoved in the cage less due to being evil and just due to being Not Very Fun to have about.

[bleak hazel]

did you know? the solar awareness tree is actually five charms long

there's all this other text but it doesn't matter

[velvet raft]

Awakening Eye being Essence 1 is nonsense

[coral wraith]

This sucks lol

[bleak hazel]

you take Keen X Technique x2 as a prereq, then Awakening Eye, then one other random button, then Eye of the Unconquered Sun

[velvet raft]

I love Solar Brawl but it is extremely silly

[tulip folio]

I'm sorry...what? That's free? And gives 2 decisive attacks after you dropped the guy's init all the way to the core of the planet?

[velvet raft]

Only one

[bleak hazel]

solar brawl is unfortunately full of cool as hell moves that are incredibly boring in play because in practice you say "I use Ascendant Battle Visage" and the GM stands up from the table and leaves

[tulip folio]

Okay, I was reading it as 'You make a decisive and then it resets your attack so you can do it again'

[velvet raft]

But the point is, you fire off one of your many, many strong withering attacks, and then you get to one-two combo off of that

[bleak hazel]

you also can't use these to produce a super cool final boss because they would instantly kill half the party

even if the party is other solars

[velvet raft]

(Of the solar combat abilities brawl has the most interesting charms by far)

[bleak hazel]

even Solars can't fight Dawns

[tulip folio]

Fuck Off Dawns
1m

This is a perfect defence against any attack, as long as it's not the first attack this tick targeting this character.

[fierce star]

Works with any ability but doesn't have the versatile keyword?

[coral wraith]

I'm really fond of Abyssal Resistance's unique charms, which is another victor for the edgelords in a long series of Ws

[bleak hazel]

this is one of the reasons Clash builds are really good, by the way

if you do not reflexive clash the Thunderclap Rush Rampage Berserker Attack you will become jam

[tulip folio]

Which is pity as I kinda found the grappling rules interesting with things like 'rounds of control' and 'moving the other guy about'

But well...Instant Jam

[velvet raft]

I do feel like making Athletics/Awareness/Dodge/Resistance noticeably crazier would help non-dawns do combat shit far better

[bleak hazel]

it would also megabuff dawns

one of the few redeeming features of Solar Brawl is that it doesn't have a ton of accuracy boosters so if you're very lucky you can play this shit like it's Metal Gear Solid and use 2-3 reflexive clash charms to fend off the really big stuff

[tulip folio]

If I may be a bit mean to solars? XD

[velvet raft]

Specifically make them notably crazier at essence 2+

You may, I'm used to it

[tulip folio]

Their charms don't really feel linked to their castes.

Like I look at Sids and I go 'Yes, I can tell that Presence is a Battles ability'

Or 'Yep, this medicine looks like it's endings'

[bleak hazel]

(in the case of the sids, it helps that they are literally colour-coded)

[velvet raft]

They're not, particularly

[tulip folio]

But nothing about Resistance screams 'Priest Caste'

Which makes them feel much less interesting

If I'm being remotely coherant?

[coral wraith]

Come to Abyssals, we have Reflexive Clash redirects

[velvet raft]

Part of it is that Resistance isn't for Zeniths in particular now

Or whatever

Only the four attacking abilities are unique to a particular caste

[bleak hazel]

really what you would need to do to make dawns less unreasonable is nerf like six to eight charms so they can no longer infinite doomcombo

[tulip folio]

I recognise that charm XD

That's my favorite 2e Infernal Monster charm, Screaming Meat Shield! I'm glad to see it got some new life.

It's very fluffy for Abyssals

[upper stratus]

welcome back screaming meat shield

[bleak hazel]

they still have the best individual charms by far, but the difference between Johnny Brawl and James Resistance Supernal in terms of how fun they are to fight is insane

Resistance solars are the only good dawns, standing there and letting them break their swords on your Glorious Solar Pecs is fun as hell

there is also counterplay, even if it's "run away and wait for Aegis of Invincible Might to go down"

[coral wraith]

It's really cool, I love the Abyssal chain-weapon line

[fierce star]

Hmm. anyone in here other than iki familiar with Legends of the Wulin?

[tulip folio]

War Dawn, spotting like 800 DBs and Every Sidereal turning up: "OH GOD, I'M NOT A COMBAT DAWN WITHOUT AN ARMY!"

[bleak hazel]

only by name and like vague deal

was this the one where there is One Stat and it's Do Kung Fu?

[coral wraith]

Chain-And-Armour Mortification is low key the real grappler build

I love it

[bleak hazel]

war dawn is also scary but fair, I like those too

[tulip folio]

Chain-And-Armour Mortification is very stylish

[fierce star]

There's more than one stat! It is all 'do kung fu' though

[tulip folio]

Adds some real Personal Flavour to the charmset.

[fierce star]

i'm basically pondering how to adapt a group from the Wu Lin in there to creation, is why I bring it up

[bleak hazel]

one of the favourite one-twos I've seen has been War Dawn setting up the perfect ambush and then a deeb slamming Ramparts of Obedient Earth and setting the enemy back to long range, so the ambush was completely wasted as the enemy slogged their way through the trenchworks

[upper stratus]

combo abyssal brawl and resistance duh

[bleak hazel]

war solar still won but it was an actual fight

[coral wraith]

Yeah, I built the one Abyssal I've done around CAM

Resistance Supernal and all

[tulip folio]

I know it 😛

[bleak hazel]

love you, Ramparts of Obedient Earth/Forest of Ivory Razors

one shot combat engineering is always badass

[coral wraith]

im trying 15 charms is NOT enough for the solaroids

[tulip folio]

I'm a huge fan of the Alch Charm where you just AOE2 Quickwall a fortress.

[upper stratus]

yes it is

[coral wraith]

no i need more

[fierce star]

spend your BP briar

spend all of it on more charms

[velvet raft]

Anyway, the strongest brawl stuff could be nerfed and it would still be fun

[coral wraith]

[bleak hazel]

you will not regret the BP/XP exchange rate on more charms

[velvet raft]

Because brawl being interesting is actually not heavily related to brawl being nuts

There's a lot of weird shit going on in brawl

Onslaught penalties my beloved

[bleak hazel]

yeah, brawl has innate juice

the only real boring one is melee

[velvet raft]

I'm not big on Archery either

[bleak hazel]

melee is just "bah I have the biggest stats, also everything is non-charm"

[velvet raft]

Thrown is at its best using all of its weird debuffing charms

[upper stratus]

does using "Excellent Strike" not get the creativity flowing?

[tulip folio]

I'm guessing Ghosts? Toss out a general description, people might be able to help.

[velvet raft]

"Real Good Attack"

[bleak hazel]

excellent strike would be OK if it was the One Dice Trick

what's the solar melee gimmick? they never roll 1s

OK, cool

[upper stratus]

personally, all my strikes are excellent. i don't need a charm for that

[fierce star]

lol

[tulip folio]

You will have like 8 Dice Tricks and like it 😛

[bleak hazel]

solar melee being kind of vanilla is fair enough, since it is the entry level combat tree

but it is also vanilla and really really really long

[velvet raft]

It could stand to be more interesting

It's good to have options that say "I attack"

[fierce star]

lol. Might later, on the tossing a description. Things are about to get busy here so I'm gonna be in and out at best for a bit, and it'd be silly to start a conversation and then not be here to participate in it

[tulip folio]

Clearly one must grab the devs and force them to write a description of how Solars do things that doesn't include the words 'Glorious', 'Perfect' or 'Flawless'. It must include adjectives that express themes other than 'Best'. XD

[bleak hazel]

the basic core of Excellent Strike, Fire and Stones Strike, Dipping Swallow and One Weapon Two Blows being the vanilla combat suite is totally fine, it's everything else that starts getting a bit nuts

[velvet raft]

Off the top of my head, something that would be really fitting for melee would be "give the opponent two bad choices"

[bleak hazel]

that's actually the theme for Sidereal Brawl

[tulip folio]

'I can fuck you up or I fuck up other things you care about. Pick!'

[velvet raft]

My fencing instructors are big on "there are no feints — there are threats, and if the opponent fails to answer the threat in the way you want them to, you just hit them with the threatened attack"

[tulip folio]

Sids have a charm that gives the defender a choice of 'That missed attack becomes a success' or 'I get to stab someone else instead of you' iirc

[velvet raft]

I could see melee having a lot of "do what I want in a way that disadvantages you, or I will cut you"

[bleak hazel]

that sounds like an excellent basis for a combat tree that isn't Solar Melee

[tulip folio]

I'd be intrigued by a perfect but incredibly telegraphed attack for someone's charm tree. Like 'Hey, this won't happen until the end of your turn but if you're still in melee range of me at the end of your turn, I hit you'.

[bleak hazel]

because Solar Melee, for all its vaunted style, is the white bread and butter combat tree that all other trees are built against

[tulip folio]

So it becomes 'escape me or suffer'

Not sure who's tree that would be though. Likely Sid

[bleak hazel]

in practice I think Solar Melee would be much better if it was less huge

the fact that one of the best ranged attacks in the game is in the melee tree, along with two other ranged attacks, is kind of silly

[tulip folio]

I think Solar melee would be more interesting if it hooked more into Weapon Keywords. Like, you have a charm that Does Cool Things With Chopping Attacks and a charm that Turns A Piercing Attack Into A Thin Line If It Punctures' etc.

So like, a solar can turn a weapon into it's Coolest Self

But it's still using the aspects of those weapons becuase you're taking 'Mortal Swordplay' and pushing it to 11.

[upper stratus]

that'd be swell i reckon

you'd have to give the normal daiklave an interesting tag but it'd work

[bleak hazel]

but then how would the entire tree be about swords, like how the only thing in the craft tree is Making Swords?

[velvet raft]

This would also be cool

[tulip folio]

This might get me smote but one of the main statted gods in the Sid book but: Non-sword weapons exist.

Is filled with a million swords by swordgod

[bleak hazel]

five-metal tang is great

[velvet raft]

You could potentially have stuff for weapons specifically lacking in tags

But yeah, D&D 4e fighter hours sound good XD

[bleak hazel]

swords have a keyword, it's Balanced, so you can just make the Balanced subtree slightly longer

[tulip folio]

Normal Daiklaives are Balanced iirc? I remember there was a fun 4e warlord variant based around balancing offence and defence and how it worked was it was pre-attack buffs, with different effects on success and failure.

So you get a damage boost if the attack hits...and a parry boost if the attack fails

As you just flow into a natural progression for how the fight is going

Becuase you've got a balanced, easy to use blade

[upper stratus]

balanced just a kinda boring snooze aaa keyword to me

[tulip folio]

It is an entirely passive one.

Which does make it less cool than the other 'do a cool special attack' ones

Not sure how many of those speical attacks are worth using but they're cool.

[bleak hazel]

I think that's fine, Boring Keyword for Swords can exist

it's also good

Smashing attacks are great, the others I don't see much of

[upper stratus]

also if solar melee worked like that i reckon weapons need to be reworked overall cause atm they just throw on tags in a haphazard "yea sure that makes sense. put it in" way without balancing them against each other

[tulip folio]

Staff: "Hey Seven Section Staff, why do you have every tag I have and then more?"

[upper stratus]

uhhhh martial arts

[tulip folio]

I also kinda wish the solar thrown tree (Though to be fair, this applies to most thrown trees) was less 'Ninja'

Like, tehre's a lot of ways to throw weapons

But solar thrown seems to draw entirely on 'One million shuriken being thrown at you'

[bleak hazel]

solar thrown has THIS IS FOR NIGHTS written on top of it in big block capitals

[upper stratus]

i gotta be real im glad solar thrown has some theming going on instead of being the solar melee "just be good" equivalent

[tulip folio]

That's fair, I was just complaining about the other way. XD

But it does make it stand weirdly out

As it's got a much more Defined Vibe

But also one where I go 'Making a slinger would be cool' and then I go 'Yeah but thrown doesn't super feel like a slinger tree'

[upper stratus]

solars can't be david. small solars are still goliath

[bleak hazel]

luckily solar noncombat trees are actually decent

Sail being bad is the fault of the sail system, not of Solar Sail

Investigation has the fairly core problem of "Solar detective is immune to all trickery, thus making every possible thing you might want to investigate basically trivial"

[upper stratus]

i think storyteller book introduces a functional sail alternative

[tulip folio]

You know what solar charm I miss? Science of Mutation. That was a cool one but it's basically just gotten folded under Sorcerous Workings.

It was too tied into Craft(Genesis) to really make it to 3e

[bleak hazel]

Solar Lore and Solar Socialize would need some work, but luckily we have a good socialize tree already in Abyssal Socialize

sadly both Abyssal and Solar lore deserve to be cast into the outer darkness, even if abyssal zombie-shaping technique is actually good

[upper stratus]

making the opposite of that abyssal socialize that gives you non-charm dice for being spooky. non charm dice for being heroic and brightly lit

[velvet raft]

I think Solar thrown should be all about inflicting penalties

That's where it's strongest as-is

[upper stratus]

solar thrown should be about throwing tiny solars

[velvet raft]

(Thematically strongest, I mean)

Many small rocks? Penalty. One small rock thrown very very fast? Penalty. Very big rock? Penalty.

Weird that there's no "I THREW A ROCK AT HIM" in there to be tbh

[tulip folio]

Solar thrown should be about putting out balor's eye with a slingstone and sending him screaming and clutching his face.

[velvet raft]

Agree

[bleak hazel]

I think the best version of this is actually a Sidereal artifact, which despite the fact it's in Arms of the Chosen actually resists the temptation to be all about solar charms

[tulip folio]

Is that allowed?

[bleak hazel]

the fun thing about the resonant effect is that if you make this a Prismatic Arrangement doomstone thrower you can strip 9 from the enemy defence

get bonked

all the other evocations are upgrades on this one, you can fairly easily get Double 8s on damage rolls

[tulip folio]

Doom!

[bleak hazel]

Essence 4 doom enjoyer who has bought all five evocations and powered up with Soulfire Shaper can throw a big rock that reduces enemy defence by 11, doubles 8s on the damage roll and does three automatic levels of damage on top

[tulip folio]

Huge Single Hit

[bleak hazel]

this is quite bad against anyone with a solar-level penalty negator, but as described in the artifact's lore, this is for oneshotting behemoths

[tulip folio]

Brawl Sid: "All that to kill Bob, who runs the restaurant I went to yesterday."

[upper stratus]

shit. misread the stars

[bleak hazel]

it did explicitly kill at least one solar during the Usurpation

I suppose sometimes you roll high

[tulip folio]

Look, I'm sure SOME solar never bought a penalty avoiding charm

[bleak hazel]

Twilight Georg, who has every craft charm and nothing else

[tulip folio]

There were likely a lot of stupidly built solars back then

[bleak hazel]

it's actually a DB eating machine because most of their penalty negators only negate a fixed amount

and "-11 defence" is kind of wild

[tulip folio]

How does Def work if it becomes negative? Does it stop at 0 or are you actually getting net successes over -6 or something?

[bleak hazel]

pretty sure it caps at 0, but I could be wrong

[fierce star]

Okay, with things being less hectic: I'm considering how to adapt one of the wulin groups from Legends of the Wulin to exalted. They're called the Blood Wind Cult, and they're an all-female group of assassins and bodyguards from the northeastern steppes of the setting, basically !Mongolia. They were founded and are still ran by the Demon Wolf Princess, for unknown reasons, but stated to be likely due to a broken heart and some grand betrayal.

They are, as stated, known to be bodyguards and assassins and are the best in the business at both, though they rarely take money, instead trading in favors owed and given or other, more esoteric things (usually useful for chi cultivation). They are insular in nature, telling little to strangers, and their true motivations are not really known (it's basically a big ? for the players and GM to fill out, Legends of the Wulin does that a lot and I appreciate it).

They go out of their way, however, to do two things--protect the steppe nomad tribes who live around their headquarters, a hollowed out mountain on the edge of the steppes, and to protect the disenfranchised and weak, especially women and children, from those who would use and abuse them. At the same time they're also absolutely willing to slaughter an entire village to get to one target. Once a member of the Cult has a target to either kill or protect, they will go to the ends of the earth to ensure that person's death or safety and march into hell and back, with bodyguards from the Cult almost always becoming lovers or spouses of the person they have been hired to protect. Not always, but the vast majority of the time.

There's a lot of ways to fit them into Exalted, and they can kinda just

work as is, a northeastern cult of steppe nomads and etc, probably something around the bull's area, but I'm wanting some spice to them, some kick. I'm thinking either some sort of underworld or fae connection, something to deal with the fact the Princess is several centuries old and still in her prime. She could be a lunar that split from the pact perhaps? But I'm Angry About Lunars Guy, so maybe that's too obvious.

[bleak hazel]

this seems like Lunar activities

and a good excuse for a Lunar that is really not about combat

[fierce star]

Well, there's some combat, but I guess 'really not about combat' is a sliding scale lol

[bleak hazel]

look. most Lunars I see are several tons of beef, with the exception of a single spider totem changing moon

(and death kitty, but death kitty is a forum optimisation exercise)

[fierce star]

entirely fair

I tend towards no moon, changing moon, or casteless generally in ex3, honestly. I think the one full moon I did make (though the game didn't get off the ground) was actually more ninja than warrior. Constrictor snake totem.

[bleak hazel]

no moons are actually the best at fight this edition because their bonfire anima -2 penalty to attack them is consistently very good

[upper stratus]

quite fond of the casteless

[fierce star]

pfffft. It's the ex2 'twilights are the best fighters' but for lunar. some things never change.

[upper stratus]

means you miss out on the free anti body shaping effect but it has the juice

[fierce star]

frankly the casteless anima powers are ridiculous if you want to go all-in on shapeshifting

[bleak hazel]

the Casteless thing also lets you be slightly cheesy about the XP rules

[fierce star]

and 1/day use any other 1/day is stupidly versatile

[bleak hazel]

"let me grab all these powers I want in these favoured attributes, then I'll get some tattoos, then hey, all these other attributes are now cheaper..."

charop lunar waits until he is 500 years old and Essence 5 to pick a caste

[upper stratus]

'hey fresh lunar do you want these tatoos'
'no thanks, im doing cultivation first'

[fierce star]

'if luna wanted me to have moonsilver tattoos I would have exalted with them' lunar fundamentalist casteless

[upper stratus]

'back in my day we didn't have any of these newfangled castes'
'i am 2000 years older than you'

[fierce star]

Lunar sorcerer deciding the first age castes were right, actually, it's time to unbreak things, tries to figure out how to do a solar working without literally every other lunar sorcerer helpign them

[bleak hazel]

actually in practice you can just stay casteless forever and that's XP-optimal for everything except maxing your attributes

so you stay casteless for several millenia, buy Every Charm and then go "oh, yeah, guess I'll be a No Moon"

[dense verge]

i am drawn to casteless as i am very fond of people not within absolute definitions on them

[bleak hazel]

lilith is actually just optimizing that 1 grade golden core

[dense verge]

get this moon symbol off my forehead

[upper stratus]

they still get the moon symbol don't they

it just matches the moon's phase

[dense verge]

do casteless still have the forehead mark?

[upper stratus]

hold on

[fierce star]

they do yeah

[upper stratus]

byea

[dense verge]

ah, forgot that

honestly the caste marks are kind of a personal miss for me but the rest of the anima effects and glowing and such i like

this is why dragonbloods are the best exalt

[bleak hazel]

this is why Ways of Exaltation sid prefers doing the robot and pretending to be an Alchemical

gets rid of the caste mark so nobody goes "oh shit an anathema"

[fierce star]

DB who feels like he needs to compensate for not having a caste mark, gets the symbol of hesiesh tattooed on his forehead

[sick kraken]

Huh, even attributes are cheaper for casteless

Or, sort of

[fierce star]

yeah, the casteless XP cut is nice if you're itnerested in being well rounded. I haven't done the math to figure out when it breaks even with 'having more favored attributes', but

[bleak hazel]

I find most people go for flat XP these days so it would be slightly cheaper yeah

scaling costs after chargen but not during chargen really fucks up the incentives

[fierce star]

dex5 str1 sta1

everything is either 5 or 1 (or 0 if applicable)

[sick kraken]

I will say, this isn't true at least, they pay 1 xp more than someone with it caste or favoured

[bleak hazel]

oh wait that's BP never mind

[sick kraken]

For xp, though your point still stands

[bleak hazel]

OK, you buy every charm that isn't in your planned caste/favoured spread and then get tattooed

[sick kraken]

It probably balances out

[bleak hazel]

I really like the mental image of a Lunar so dedicated to charop that they never bothered to learn a single mental field charm until they knew everything else

"at last, five thousand years of meditation later, I can obtain a second brain cell!"

[fierce star]

pft

[bleak hazel]

Luna's most powerful spreadsheet octopus

[fierce star]

'I was a professional EVE online player but then I fell through a well and now I'm reincarnated in Creation as a Lunar Exalt?'

[bleak hazel]

I'm not sure what Lunars have in terms of bureaucracy but whatever they've got, this squid has all of it

[fierce star]

lol

hoenstly I think a professional EVE online player reincarnating in creation as a sidereal would be absolutely horrifying.

[bleak hazel]

half the Pact is eliminated in a week by Bronze Faction gank squads that are finally as ruthlessly well-organised as fandom discourse sometimes likes to pretend they are

"it takes them hundreds of years to get their stuff back after respawning? well, I can certainly work with that"

[fierce star]

"First we make sure to eliminate all sources of institutional knowledge for them. I understand this is more difficult than it sounds, but you have access to enough resources that I'm sure we can get this handled within a decade."

[bleak hazel]

Abyssals being ganked in nullsec (the Labyrinth)

[fierce star]

Defining Intimacy: "Give me a big enough spreadsheet and I can save the world."

[tulip folio]

I mean, that's just a normal sid intimacy 😛

[fierce star]

lmao

[tulip folio]

Could we have averted the end of the solars if we introduced Ketchup Carjack to paradox games?

[prisma sun]

The Sidreals weren't really The Issue at that point in time

[upper stratus]

what do you think the games of divinty are

[wise ocean]

Believe it or not, Charop Kneesocks's favorite activity is map painting

[upper stratus]

oh? like in splatoon

[velvet raft]

Before organizing the usurpation, his main passion was guerilla art

[tulip folio]

Hmm...I've got most of this artifact sorted but pondering if I should up the dot value of it becuase of how much it means for the character. XD

Basicly: It's, as far as exalted is concerned, not a big deal artifact. It's the family blade of a small mortal clan and their terrestial god. It wasn't crafted by an exalt, it wasn't made in the first age. It's not even made of a magical material.

but it's also the most important weapon in the world to this character.

And with dots determining 'how many evocations it can have', I'm wondering if I should make it more dots to allow it more evocations later if I think of some.

If that remotely makes sense?

[coral wraith]

How many would you like?

Core book 3 dot weapons tend to have between 4 and 5 evocations

[tulip folio]

It's got 4 currently.

[coral wraith]

AotC has some whacky 3 dots with like, 8 evocs, but those are outliers

[upper stratus]

they're allowed 10

[coral wraith]

10!!

then you're fine Iki lol

[upper stratus]

yea aotc has "max evocs per artifact level" rules

[coral wraith]

ah yeah here we go

[tulip folio]

Whirling Snowflake
In 2e this would be Starmetal but 3e Starmetal is different so it's just kinda weird Reaper Daiklaive

When the Lover's Deathknights came for the Yun Clan, they spread poison. They spoke of the emptiness of life and the death of love. How the god they had sworn themselves to was a coward, that her gentle snowflakes would shatter and flee in the face of pyreflame. They had good reason to believe such, for Whirling Snowflake was a very minor goddess, barely more than a local elemental. She helped ease the cold and dark of winter but was not a war goddess, she could not hope to oppose such a foe.

Despite that, however, she would not abandon her people. She brought avalanches crashing down upon their armies of the dead, drawing deeper and deeper on power she did not have until her body broke apart under her. The laughing death knight brought her shattered form before her clan and spilled her icy blood in front of them. To his shock, rather than shattering their faith, it galvanized the clan. The Yun clan is no more but those that knew of them say that not a single one bowed before the Lover Clad In Raiment of Tears.

Whirling Snowflake is a hilt without a blade, seemingly useless. When drawn by an attuned wielder, a blade of ice and snow forms, as fragile as its namesake but refusing to break no matter the pressure brought upon it. Creatures of Darkness are always Dissonant with Whirling Snowflake.

Fluff for said weapon.

[coral wraith]

oh that's neat

[upper stratus]

im digging it

i was gonna say the use of "seemingly" twice in quick succession doesn't flow well but you already took care of that lol

[coral wraith]

honestly dope

[bleak hazel]

I would just label it Starmetal so as to avoid an entire paragraph of who is resonant with what, unless you specifically want to deny it to Solars

and yeah, the max evocation count is completely out of scale with basically every published artifact, so it's very rarely a limit

[tulip folio]

That's fair. I'm going to keep the 'creatures of darkness are always dissonant', as by artifact standards there's a lot of well...personality to this one. Being a semi-sapient fragment of a god.

I doubt it will matter unless Mara steals it with her Black Claw Bullshit

[fierce star]

'This weapon is resonant with members of the Yun clan, by blood or adoption, as well as any character with a major or defining intimacy in opposition to the forces of Oblivion.'

and then call it 'Godforged Reaper Daiklaive' or something

[tulip folio]

Also pondering what the Base Positive for it should be.

[fierce star]

Other than the beamklaive charm?

or did you decide against stealing that?

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah, they do get that and for free.

Nevermind, it has the positive.

Which will be a Renamed Essence Core Inition.

And to be fair, essence core ignition is good.

[fierce star]

I really like it, yeah

[tulip folio]

Hmm...is this too cheap for an evocation? It's based on an existing one but that existing one is A) A Ride Charm that keeps your mount up, not you B) A solar one.

The Yun Do Not Kneel
Cost: 1m; Mins: Essence 1
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Heart of the Yun
If an effect would cause the wielder to become Prone, she can use this charm to instead keep her footing. This may be used when falling to reduce the damage suffered as if she had fallen one zone less and to land on her feet. 

If the wielder dies, she always dies standing.

[bleak hazel]

I think because of the falling damge this is at least 2 motes

[tulip folio]

Fair. I'll up it to 2 motes

[bleak hazel]

it's also extremely good against smashing attacks, which are very much worth doing all the time

[tulip folio]

Oh, it is 100% designed as 'Smashing Attacks Fuck Off'.

Snowstorm Chill
Cost: —; Mins: Essence 2
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: The Yun Do Not Kneel
The cold of her final avalanches surrounds Whirling Snowflake, freezing attackers to the bone.

This enhances Heart of the Yun in the following way:

-When she disarms an artifact weapon, she can spend 2 initiative to surround it with killing frost until the end of her next turn. A character attempting to retrieve it during this time suffers (Essence) dice of decisive damage, which ignore Hardness.
-When she parries an artifact weapon, she can spend 2 initiative to send painful chills flowing through it, inflicting two dice of decisive damage, which ignore Hardness.
-The wielder may use Feats of Demolition on objects and barriers of fire or deathly energy, despite their non-physical nature, even if they are supernatural in origin. The bonus successes to Feats of Demolition from Heart of the Yun are non-charm when used this way.

For context: Heart of the Yun is an ice-themed but mechanically identical Essence Core Ignition. So it lets you basicly do what you can do to Unarmed Attacks with Essence Core Ignition to Artifact Weapons too.

(I'll admit, I am very tempted to replace that third thing with 'Getting an Ice/Snow Based Legend-Forging Blow' as the capstone)

[bleak hazel]

constantly ticking people for decisive damage whenever you parry seems a little mean for a zero commitment passive

also has a very strange blind spot where if they come at you with a regular steel sword you can't zap them

[fierce star]

Well, you can just outright destroy regular weapons with essence core ignition

[bleak hazel]

ah, this is true

[fierce star]

And it's not quite zero commitment? I guess 2i isn't a huge cost, buti t's also only two dice of damage

[bleak hazel]

it's a mini-decisive with no risk, because normally hitting someone with a decisive attack rolls... one die of damage per point of init

soft decisive attacks like that exist, but they tend to have a few more hoops to jump through

lunar one as an example

you can reflexively trigger this when you use Deadly Beastman, but it's still costing willpower + you have to land the individual attacks

I don't think it needs to be much more expensive but given the tendency of exalts to wander around loaded up with artifact weapons I would say you should need to throw a couple more motes at this

[tulip folio]

nods
That's fair. The intent was sorta that it's a mirror to being able to do it to Exalted Martial Artists who come at you with their fists.

But I guess 'Artifact Weapon' is more common than 'Ima Punch Him!'

[bleak hazel]

typically, yes

beamklaves are very strong anyway, since if they have normal swords you can just do that one scene in Crouching Tiger and break them one after the other

It is nice to have a template for generic sword super modes though

[tulip folio]

That's fair. Maybe up it to 3 init? Or 2 motes, 2 init?

[bleak hazel]

Yeah, I would make it 3 init per zap to even out the fact it's an autohit

obviously nobody wants to roll an attack every time

[tulip folio]

Fair. Do you think the 'bigger hit if they try to pick up the disarmed weapon in their next turn' is okay?

With it being (Essence) instead of 2?

Since it only lasts 1 turn and they can avoid the hit by just 'not picking up the same weapon immediately'?

[bleak hazel]

Yeah that's probably fine, you have to land the disarm first and there are lots of things people can do about that

[tulip folio]

Like 'Hey, I have a Backup Knife'

Or '99% of martial arts let you punch too'

Unshackled Spirit Oath
Cost: 5m; Mins: Essence 2
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Resonant
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: The Yun Do Not Kneel
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.

This one I'll admit I just outright stole from another artifact and did only some very minor tinkering.

[tulip folio]

(Though since it's a canon artifact I grabbed it from I should likely as people's balance thoughts, can't trust that to have the fine balance of homebrew :P)

[bleak hazel]

more restrictive Duck Fate, same essence level, less shenanigans

seems reasonable

except with a scenelong upgrade, which is probably fine because you can't use it to apply stunted parry 12 to social influence (love you, Charcoal March of Spiders + Ways of Exaltation)

[tulip folio]

nods
It comes from the Autocthonian Shield, except with 'restrict wielder/affect mind' instead of 'energy based'.

I am dangerously tempted to make the capstone for this artifact 'Rethemed Legend-Forging Blow' as that's like the Coolest Evocation I know. XD

[bleak hazel]

I should look at that shield and see if it would work for my stupid whiteroom Sid who rides around on a horse with two shields and has Parry 17 when standing still for long enough

[tulip folio]

Yes, yes it would. Disgustingly well.

[bleak hazel]

(this is not a character I would use in a real game, this is me Fucking Around With Sidereals)

[tulip folio]

It's base effect is 'when you are full defencing, people also have a -2 to their dice pool to attack you'

[bleak hazel]

I was about to go "aww, it's only one shield, my clashes will be bad"

why am I clashing

I have def 15 at least and they're at -5 to hit me

just let them bounce

stick a light weapon in the other hand for +5 accuracy where necessary

[upper stratus]

whwhuh

[bleak hazel]

parry 7, +2 heavy cover from web, +2 pretending to be a robot at bonfire anima, +1 stunt

[tulip folio]

...I'm also realizing that the user of this will likely have Duck Fate because she's a sid so it's a hair redundant. XD

[bleak hazel]

use shield and spend 5 motes a round to flurry full defence with your attack to get that up to 14

[upper stratus]

does the static bonus from web even apply to dodging influence with goose fate

[bleak hazel]

pretty sure it does not, no

but this thing works on parry

so I was just poking the idea of Parry God who Parries Everything

this is what rakan did to block saturn, it was very silly

OK, most of the evocations of this shield are kind of bad for Parrysid because they use your anima, which you're using to run the infinite free excellency engine

but the passive is nuts

[upper stratus]

oh i see i thought you were talking about applying that 12 parry to dodging unconventional things with duck fate

[bleak hazel]

nah, Duck Fate is evasion only

[upper stratus]

tbh the heavy cover is nice but most ranged charm trees have some kinda cover negator

i wouldn't rely on it too much

[bleak hazel]

cover works in melee, dig in

the full cover only works if they're miles away but heavy cover against everyone trying to punch you once you've stood still for two rounds is pretty good

[tulip folio]

I think Only Other Sids have a Melee Cover Negator.

As they've got that 'just punch through the object' charm

[bleak hazel]

parrysid really wants to be standing in midair and fighting from short range, because that way his opponent doesn't also get the cover

but given your excellencies are free and theirs are not, you are all right with everyone having a really slow day today

I'm actually not sure if the cover also applies to your enemies, it does just say it's "you and anyone else you Defend Other on"

but the cover rules are a little loose

[upper stratus]

does it actually, i've seen some melee charms that negate cover but the core book description for cover only mentions ranged attacks

[bleak hazel]

core book says "attacks" for the generic cover description and "ranged attacks" for the full cover, they differ

it then talks about "crossing blades" so yes, it does work in melee

[upper stratus]

right but there's a sid brawl charm that talks about going through full cover so it's a little confusing

[bleak hazel]

it ignores all other cover as well

I don't think there's any reading of "cover says all attacks, talks about swords, there are melee range charms that ignore cover" that concludes that cover doesn't apply in melee

[upper stratus]

yea no i agree with that part cause i misremembered but the full cover part is rather oxd

odd

[tulip folio]

Diamond Dust
Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: Unshackled Spirit Oath, Snowstorm Chill
Calling upon the final moments of Whirling Snowflake, the wielder briefly channels the power of a goddess burning her life to protect what she loves. She may unleash one of the following effects:

• She can knock back an enemy of up to Legendary Size, like a tyrant lizard or a warstrider, with a decisive attack. A hit drives the enemy three range bands backwards with a torrential avalanche; if flung into an obstacle, he may suffer falling damage (Exalted, p. 232) at the Storyteller’s discretion.
• The wielder can shatter heavy fortifications into frozen chunks with a click of her heels, doubling her effective base Strength to determine if she may attempt a given feat of demolition (Exalted, p. 231). Success destroys the targeted object instantly, while failure indicates the wielder will need to spend at least a few minutes more to destroy it.
• The wielder can use Diamond to stunt other applications of incredible cold, such as putting out a burning mountain or forming a bastion of ice to halt an army. The Storyteller should enhance these stunts with benefits comparable to the above options.

Diamond Dust can only be used once per story, unless reset by upholding a positive Defining Tie towards the Yun clan or against the forces of Oblivion. The Dawn Caste anima power cannot reset this Evocation.

Legally-Not-Legend-Forging Blow

I failed to resist the urge to make use of my Favourite Evocation for inspiration.

[next delta]

I feel like full cover should also apply to melee attacks? I guess it doesn't so you can try to stab around a corner or something?

[tulip folio]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mknig0moTGW9ji8Bb3NGM02ReVUKYBhpYrSFcH9-miE/edit?usp=sharing Alright, provisional artifact setup. The general mechanical theme is mostly 'parrying and and acts of demolition'.

[upper stratus]

some gods commission for exigence and some just turn into sick nasty weapons instead

[bleak hazel]

I need some good evocations for my Sid's silken armour if and when he manages to get hold of some and I admit I am fairly stumped

[fierce star]

looks good to me, iki. Very thematic.

[bleak hazel]

so I am just sitting around making more prospective artifacts for my Abyssal instead

[tulip folio]

Do you have any particualr vibe, either mechanically or fluffwise for it?

[upper stratus]

im quite fond of the one presented in sid book tbh

[tulip folio]

Ironically despite liking her sword a lot more, this sid's armour is the more powerful artifact as far as dots/number of charms is concerned (Among other reasons because it's silk armour and silk armour is always 4 dot plus XD)

[fierce star]

hey, martial arts is a big deal y'know

you know my alchemical's arguably wasted a dot on silk armor instead of light armor by virtue of all her MAs planned working in at least light armor (most more)

[bleak hazel]

as I understand it, a few of the current devs would honestly rather it be the usual 3 dot minimum but that's just rumour

[fierce star]

It would not surprise me

[bleak hazel]

my current sid is Ghost Detective, and his sword is Ghost, so "armour that works better the more you know about your opponent" was the one sentence version I had written down

capstone of "if you know all their intimacies, [really really good thing]"

[fierce star]

The easy thing to do is have the baseline charm, then, let you use enemy intimacies to boost your soak or hardness, limited to once per intimacy per scene, maybe? Start with 'can use minor', upgrades for major and defining? Capstone of 'if you know all your enemy's intimacies, whenever you would use one to boost your soak or hardness, double the boost' or something?

spitballing thoughts there

[bleak hazel]

it's very good, unfortunately it's all about dodge and this Sid has awful dodge

[upper stratus]

the sid book silk armor was a 3 dot in the draft funnily enough

[tulip folio]

I could see them getting 'You can treat Join Battle as Read Intentions for a person in the battle' as a starting charm.

Lets you identify intimacies and also lets you go 'Hey, we're being ambushed...why are we being ambushed?'

[tulip folio]

Honestly, a really basic one? iirc, sids don't have much for that whole 'Improve basic sense stuff' in their awareness. So maybe a 'Can see through walls, while this is active, reduce cover by a level' scenelong?

[bleak hazel]

oh that would be very fun, yes

honestly I know Generic Artifact isn't a thing this edition but I wish I could just get some three-dot Silken Armour that's just standard issue LAA that works with martial arts

[tulip folio]

I 100% have that when it comes to artifact armour

Like sometimes have a particular vibe I want for armour

But most of the time I want to just not be set on fire by DB anima

So I want some basic hardness

[bleak hazel]

yeah, I am OK with "every sword has its own Deal" but I just want the armour as stock

[tulip folio]

Here's a pondering: How are there still generic non-weapon, non-armour artifacts? XD

[fierce star]

there's not supposed to be, in theory

they do stress that even two dot artifacts are CREATIONS OF WONDER, UNIQUE IN ALL CREATION WITH THEIR OWN TALES TO TELL

incluidng J. Average Hearthstone Amulet

[tulip folio]

Sure but the corebook has like Bracers of Universal Crafting and Essence Gliders. XD

[fierce star]

UNIQUE IN ALL CREATION iki

think of them as more categories

[spring lynx]

i mean, it might be technically true, each one is a handmade masterwork

[fierce star]

for the record no yes i agree this is stupid

[spring lynx]

functionally though

[tulip folio]

Clearly Bracers of Universal Crafting exist becuase someone once, ever, managed to buy all the Solar Craft Charms.

And they needed another place to dump exp for crafting bonuses.

So they added another craft tree in your craftable artifact

So you can craft craft charms

[fierce star]

lol

[tulip folio]

Here is a silly pondering: Can you pick Ultimately Useful Tubes as your weapon of choice for Thousand Blades?

It is an artifact and a weapon.

But it uses the stats of mundane non-artifact weapons.

[fierce star]

I'd say RAW no because thousand blades specifies an artifact melee weapon

and it's an [artifact] [melee weapon] but not an [artifact melee weapon]

RAI who knows honestly,b ut as a GM I'd allow it because someone with forty ultimately useful tubes sounds hilariouis

[tulip folio]

Hey ID. Invent an evocation tree for a Winterbreath Jar.

Come on, give the Refrigerator evocations 😛

[fierce star]

grmblh... two dot base so need to make it better at base fora three dot version to qualify for evocations...

[tulip folio]

:3

[fierce star]

base size is... already variable... hearthstone slot...

[upper stratus]

simple. you can now enter the jar after a stresfull day and cry in order to regain 1 wp and lose 1 limit

[fierce star]

please, god, no

[tulip folio]

'It now has an icecream maker, 3 dot'

[fierce star]

I didn't need memories of my time in the fast food gulag to be unlocked again

I repressed those for a reason

[upper stratus]

with another evocation it gets a air cleaning unit so you can have a smoke in there

[fierce star]

Winterbreath Walk-in (***)
Unlike standard Winterbreath Jars, Winterbreath walk-ins appear to be a simple scroll. When unfurled, it becomes a rigid door to a room stored Elsewhere, kept just a few degrees above freezing through the usual sorts of methods these things employ. It costs one mote to attune to a Winterbreath Walk-In, and only the attuned user can unfurl the scroll, though once unfurled anyone can enter or re-furl it, which seals the entrance from both directions. The Walk-In itself is a room, roughly ten meters cubed, able to store ample amounts of food and drink. The scrollcase for it contains a single hearthstone slot, that when powered with any non-fire aspected hearthstone, reduces the temperature inside to near absolute zero.

[upper stratus]

this sounds great for a grappler

[tulip folio]

'Grab Faffles, shove him in the fridge, close the door'

[upper stratus]

all i need is One Grapple

[fierce star]

just store all your problems in the elsewhere fridge

what could possibly go wrong

[tulip folio]

Important Question: The rules say that bigger, fancier Yasal Crystals exist and they can hold higher essence ghosts but cost more dots.

How many dots of crystal do you think I'd need to catch say an...essence 7...ghost.

Hypothetically, definetly not planning on Pokeballing a Deathlord.

[spring lynx]

wait, when did exalted get soul gems

[upper stratus]

i can't believe todd released skyrim again

[fierce star]

skyrim: exalted edition

[spring lynx]

anyway, if i had to guess, N/A

[tulip folio]

Yeah, that's my assumption.

But man, if it wouldn't be fucking funny

[spring lynx]

and that assumes a deathlord is even compatible

[tulip folio]

I will go to Silph Co (Subdivision of Division of Endings) and get my ghost master ball.

[spring lynx]

all i'm saying is, don't expect faffles to stay in it

[tulip folio]

Hmm...man, I hate trying to translate Arms of the Chosen artifacts to other exalt types.

The Orphan’s Key
Cost: —; Mins: Essence 1
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: Any one Charm this Evocation augments
Forged to be a legendary thief, worn by a legendary thief, Sozen conveys mastery of its art. 

This Evocation enhances the following Charms as described below:
• Picking a sorcerous lock with Lock-Opening Touch (Exalted, p. 317) doubles 8s, while the cost of opening a mundane lock is  reduced by two motes.
• The Solar gains (Essence) non-Charm dice on the roll to use Master Plan Meditation (Exalted, p. 318).
• Once per day, she may waive the Willpower cost of Door-Evading Technique (Exalted, p. 321).

I'm going to need to go through Sidereal Charms and work out what the closest comparison is to these charms to rewrite this damn evocation.

[velvet raft]

Maybe stuff evoking silkworms or spiders?

Or like, unraveling the threads to use in various fancy ways?

Which could go with the spider stuff

[tulip folio]

Maybe I should just snip off the 'Doesn't work for non-solars' evocations and write entirely new ones rather than trying to update them.

[velvet raft]

I personally am fine with splat-only evocations in moderation, but you should not feel beholden to them if you’re already doing homebrew

[bleak hazel]

they're good for standard issue artifacts like the 3 dots and silken armour in the sid book

[bleak hazel]

thousand blades being compatible with almost any Martial Art because it can pick form weapons is such a meme, it's already very strong

Thousand Blades/Emerald Gyre might be a really good time

because 1kBlades has "wham, huge onslaught" and Emerald Gyre loves onslaught

[bleak hazel]

pondering an alchemical with four swords and I have absolutely no idea what sword-related things to do with them

violet bier only actually has two mastery effects, neither of which are that critical

so I could do that

would just need a cheap way of scoring a few points of decisive damage so I can reflexively get the Form up

[velvet raft]

If you could get it up to six swords there’s a wacky artifact for that in one of the enemy books

[bleak hazel]

stealing Eska's knives is a little tricky considering she's on the other side of the big seal

[velvet raft]

Eh I’m sure you can get something like them in autochthonia

[bleak hazel]

that or I just have two medium swords and two short swords for easy defence/clash balancing, but that would be really boring so I'd rather make a nice 4-dot relic that gives the benefits of both as long as I'm using all four of the four swords or something

[bleak hazel]

aha, the new Alch book does make provision for a good old Bionicle campaign

one deeb per element wakes up in autocthonia sans memories

[tulip folio]

Hmm...I really need to put these other artifacts properly to paper so I don't lose my thoughts.

[tulip folio]

I know her scythe has 'death 'as one of its themes but I'm podering what to do with the pre-fuckery-theme.

The Last Harvest's First Reaping, Orichalcum and Soulsteel Beamstaff/Beamscythe

The Last Harvest's First Reaping pre-dates human life in Autochthonia. The core of the weapon is an ancient Orichalcum Wrackstaff, forged before the War in Heaven by Autochthon himself, to arm the first generation of Solar Exalted with. In the millennia since the Exodus, it has passed hands many times; and been changed by those hands, too. It is said that once it fell into Apostate hands, and a beam-system was wrought on it of Soulsteel. Or that the beam system was made on commission for Ku, who wielded this weapon against a mighty gremlim that was once the divine minister's own son. Few know the truth, but the weapon now breathes both life and death.

Rules: This weapon lacks Concealable, unlike most Beam weapons. However, it is a Wrackstaff even when Essence Core Ignition has not been activated. When Essence Core Ignition is used, and at the start of the wielder's turn while active, the user can reflexively transform it into a Beamscythe or back into a Beamstaff for the duration of the charm.

A Life/Death theming wouldn't be out of place but not 100% sure on it.

[tulip folio]

Could set it up for magic with the staff aspect. Though I'd need to look through the existing artifacts for 'what sort of evocations can affect magic', as I only know that Seven Section Staff in the sid book.

[bleak hazel]

for some reason I like Alchemical names more than Abyssal names but I really can't come up with any good ones

need to name this Adamant Caste bot in creation that is engaging in Heavenly Robocop Shenanigans with one of my Sidereals

also hot damn, the Adamant powers are good for Sids

"one shot jump start your Ways of Exaltation bonfire nonsense and refill your mana bar, also get a bunch of non-charm dice that you can boost the hell out of"

if both the Alch and the Sidereal are E3, this basically jumpstarts the Sid up to Essence 5 in terms of raw power

[upper stratus]

need an alchemical oomfie

[fierce star]

'Seven Facted Guardian Of Heavenly Halls'

[bleak hazel]

I think they get their names on awakening, so it probably wouldn't directly reference the job, although I could be wrong

I didn't see a naming section in the Alch book

[fierce star]

From chapter fiction and previous editions they wake up with knowledge of their name, yeah

at least iirc, i'll double check to make sure I didn't gaslight myself

yeah, the outro fiction in the manuscrip has an alchemical waking up in creation with knowledge of a few things, including her name, fresh out of a creation-set vats complex

[bleak hazel]

it's important to pay them back with lots of horoscopes and also biscuits

[tulip folio]

Pondering what sorta mechanical areas would be fitting for 'evocations that improve spellcraft'.

[fierce star]

'hold onto sorcerous motes longer' 'gain extra ways to generate sorcerous motes' 'flurry shape sorcery with otheractions'

[tulip folio]

My concern is sorta that those area already what most exalts charmsets already do with magic/trying to work out reasonable ways outside of that.

[bleak hazel]

there is a pretty standard spread of stuff already available in the more reasonable published artifacts

more motes, learn extra spells via artifact, flurry sorcery, gain X benefit while casting, store spell in stick for later use

and then mnemon's hat, which is probably beyond the scope of chargen artifacts

[wise ocean]

mnemon's hat 2: the menening

[bleak hazel]

HamSandLich did a very good joke map of Exalted and it decreased the amount I was able to take Mnemon seriously by about two points on the scale

she's one of my favourite deebs, though

[wise ocean]

We all love a woman who summons demons from her blood in this chat

[tulip folio]

Could make spellcasting More Subtle

[bleak hazel]

it's already fairly quiet by default

[tulip folio]

Fair...hmm...back to pondering I suppose.

[fierce star]

I think a big thing is to have a theme that's mroe than just 'make sorcery better' for an artifact

[bleak hazel]

yeah, that's already been covered pretty well

[fierce star]

I've made two sorcery-themed artifacts; one was a devil caster, and it's whole thing was exorcisms, so it had evocations that effected spirits, let you flurry reloads and shape sorcery, stuff like that

[bleak hazel]

like how if I wanted Disarm Weapon I would just go grab the Enlightening Abnegation Sabres

[fierce star]

the other one was a paired daiklaive and artifact spear whatever the short one is that was alla bout battle sorcery, directing the field of battle and your troops and casting big battlegroup-deleting or guiding spells

[tulip folio]

...right.

[bleak hazel]

I really like the Abnegation Sabres

some very funny buttons there

you can use a few of their abilities together to relieve someone of their sword, their name and their goals all at once

[fierce star]

including a capstone that let the dragonblooded wielder of it manifest a single celestial-circle spell as the capstone for it, at like E4 I think? Regardless. I find artifacts that are sorcery based work best when they're sorcery+x, or a specific sort of sorcery

[dense verge]

i like that charm/evocation for no other reason than it includes the word abnegation

[bleak hazel]

lots of abnegation available in that artifact, but you do have to say the full name every time

[tulip folio]

Hmm...RiRi's main things with general purpose magic are 'zombies' and 'nuking people with big decisive hits'. So those are likely the areas to play more into...hmm...

[bleak hazel]

could be fun to convert Summon Ghost from a ritual spell to a regular time spell with one of the higher-up evocations

bam, war ghost

lead my zombies

[bleak hazel]

actually that could probably be entry level, even

[tulip folio]

...do you think a variant of what mnemon would be reasonable as the capstone evocation of an artifact? 'Get one specific spell, one level higher than what you could normally cast'?

[bleak hazel]

I think it would need to be a pretty big artifact, probably 5 dot

beyond that it's mostly a thematics question since obviously different people will have different tolerance for giving anyone other than a solar the Solar Circle

Terrestrial to Celestial or Ivory to Shadow is far less contentious because those two tiers are both just kind of around

[tulip folio]

I was pondering it as the capstone for an Initiation artifact (like how you can buy evocations for the amulet of eyes). Since that's All About Casting.

[bleak hazel]

Those are sufficiently wierd that I'd say ask your GM

I vaguely recall a word-of-vance from somewhere that basically went "whenever you're given Evocations on a thing without a dot rating, like Glorious Solar Sabre, assume 3 dot" but I could be misremembering

and of course there's nothing stopping you making or buying a 5-dot sorcery rock instead of the standard one

[tulip folio]

Huh, I'd have assumed higher than that due to how hard they are to get multiples of. You don't really get Lots of Initiations like you can just Make Artifacts. XD

[bleak hazel]

They also don't have attunement costs and most initiations don't come with artifacts, you do just pull an evocation platform from nowhere XP-wise

There's a big soulsteel sorcery greatsword in one of the books that I believe gives you extra spells, but it requires you to know the right Circle first, much to my chagrin

no deeb finding Not!frostmourne and learning rain of doom

[tulip folio]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rktt4qgwJzT9BBA3fSfUAoGcbOjjQXnPG4vQlZHprdM/edit?usp=sharing Oh yeah, also put the various homebrew spells I made in one place. They're mostly Ivory cicle, mind you.

I hope they look okay.

[velvet raft]

This reminds me of Jubei-chan

[bleak hazel]

I like them, especially the doom bell

the control effect on it feels a little bit odd but it wouldn't be the first spell to have a control that did something completely different

[tulip folio]

I also sorta wanted a kinda situational spell to have a slightly more general purpose control. As the times you want to nuke everything about you is not super common. XD

[tulip folio]

Glad to hear it. Shattering Void Mirror is likely the one I'm mechanically least sure about. Against most targets it hits less hard than a solid Flight of the Brilliant Raptor's Init + Temporary Willpower but sometimes foes have a lot of wound levels and while it degrades either the target's damage, it doesn't have 'Well, the more I spend the big resources this battle, the weaker it gets'.

[bleak hazel]

it's possible to build specifically for huge Brilliant Raptors, whereas this one just kind of works, so I think you're good

[tulip folio]

Third Circle Snake Demons with 40 Health Levels: "I think it's quite unfair!"
Iki: "You are an outlier. Also I think you're saved by the fact non-AOE can't do more than 1 health level to you per-hit."

[bleak hazel]

yeah, she is the rare example of a target for which DOOB is gross underkill

[bleak hazel]

actually, this works great on falafel - 42 health levels, single target and his health gating only works between each type of health level

so he uses Devouring Void Defence but you're still probably chunking him for all his health levels of one type at any given time

[prisma sun]

I feel like specifically a spell that is used to nullify big dramatic bosses is kinda lame I won't lie

[bleak hazel]

yeah, this is very well balanced for normal exalts but it is kind of the setpiece removal service

[prisma sun]

Which to me isn't Fun Design

I feel like there should at least be a cap

Like "3-5 or Essence, whatever is higher"

[tulip folio]

...that would be basicly Always Worse than Raptor's + Willpower

...that was a reply to the wrong one

Unless you've been dropped to 2 or less Willpower I suppose

[tulip folio]

Entertainignly, it's actually an old 2e spell I updated unlike most of these being new.

[prisma sun]

Well 2nd was a lot more designed around the idea of Rocket Tag

I also think that it's fine that this should do less damage than a dedicated damage spell since it's also stealing motes

[tulip folio]

...I mean that dedicated damage spell ALSO has a 3+ damage effect

Brilliant Raptor does more damage and then does even more damage via bonfire if you deal 3+ health levels.

I'll admit I don't really see it ending up with much purpose if it's not even good at it's dedicated role of 'Hitting Undamaged High Health Targets'

[bleak hazel]

hmm, I am pondering silly elder nonsense

there's a sidebar in the alch book that says "to metropolize yourself in Creation, you probably want to site yourself on a demesne/manse that has been specially prepared"

there is also a Sidereal Martial Arts tree that starts with "demesne emulation practice" and ends with a form that gives you mega mote regen when in a demense/manse that is attuned to you

could you get an elder sidereal/adamant alchemical duo which funnels Unimaginable Power through the diamond fortress into the ancient elder martial artist

that sounds fun

....this is the punchline to the joke about someone trying to attune a newly awakened alchemical, isn't it

a thousand years later they figure out how to actually do that

[tulip folio]

The primary purpose of the spell is hitting high health level targets, only beating out raptor at like 16+ health levels.

[next delta]

Can more than one person attune to a manse? Because I feel like a metropolis probably wants to be that person if so lol

[bleak hazel]

no, but I feel there is some potential Mystical Bullshit that could be done with the entire SMA tree that turns you into a living manse

[next delta]

I think the concern is that really high health targets are more likely to be "bosses", so you don't want a spell to be too specialized to killing them easily?

[prisma sun]

Yeah essentially

It's a spell that's relatively alright for most things, and then just becomes absurd against very large targets that you kinda want to have some staying power

Theoretical Infinite Scaling just seems like it presents gameplay issues

[tulip folio]

...I guess I better scrap the spell then, if the premise for it is no good

[prisma sun]

If you want to keep the vibe, you could have it transform health boxes into penalty ones

[next delta]

You can have the bonus be a threshold instead of scaling forever?

[tulip folio]

The issue is that right now the spell only beats out brilliant raptor at 16-20+ undamaged health levels.

Brilliant Raptor is doing Init + 9 (Your willpower is 1 lower when casting as you'll cast before getting the 1 back from succeeding on the cast)

Which this spell needs 18, undamaged health levels, to match.

Like I don't see a way to cap it that gives it a Notable Role while also being a notable Cap.

[tulip folio]

...huh?

[prisma sun]

Like "In addition to damage your x0 Healthboxes become x-1 Healthboxes"

[tulip folio]

...I mean, that doesn't really play into the theme of being a High Health Cracker.

...I also think this is actually kinda bad at killing Faffle despite the comment. It can do an initial big hit but since it cares about undamaged health levels, a second cast drops in damage pretty heavily.

It's a big start to a fight with high health people.

[next delta]

You could do something like Death of Obsidian Butterflies and have it not based on initiative and also not reset initiative?

20 free initative is a lot, but it's fair that it is probably an edge case

Like I think you can make the concept work if you mostly just nudge the numbers around

Hmm, what are typical enemy health level distributions anyways?

[tulip folio]

That's what I'm checking right now.

Against Anys Syn, another of the superbosses, it matches a Willpower 8 Brilliant Raptor if she's taken no health levels of damage yet. Against 5 Metal Tang it beats brilliant raptor by a few dice on the first hit and drops beneath it on a second shot.

[bleak hazel]

Syn is a boss fight but formatted as Basically A Normal Exalt

same for MHS, who has 27 levels

really you're blowing up things like third circle demons and the various behemoths

mahicara is fine because mahicara has six different health tracks for its different bits

[tulip folio]

Elnuet-that-Was gets absolutely fucking stomped by it becuase his entire defensive setup is 'I have many health levels'

[bleak hazel]

the Living Manse gets absolutely evaporated

wait does legendary size gate this or not

because if it does there's this strange mechanic where you can eviscerate big things but only if you become a tyrant lizard first

[tulip folio]

I think it doesn't.

[bleak hazel]

it is a decisive attack from a smaller character, but that strikes me as a very strange interaction

[tulip folio]

Decisive attacks from smaller enemies cannot deal more than (3 + attacker’s Strength) levels of damage to it, not counting any levels of damage added by Charms or other magic.

As like, all the levels of a spell are added by magic.

As far as I can tell, getting nuked by brilliant raptor or other spells punches through Legendary Size.

[bleak hazel]

would that not indicate that legendary size does nothing against any Simple charm

[tulip folio]

I think God-Scourging Wail would beat Legendary Size, yeah

[next delta]

Wouldn't an artifact also not care about legendary size?

[bleak hazel]

I'm pretty sure that it's meant to work on the myriad of charms that are Simple formatted but basically amount to "create a different kind of punch"

[next delta]

Though I kinda it figured it was intentional that exalts can beat up legendary size things without too much added difficulty

It's a pretty poorly worded exception though lol

[tulip folio]

Yeah, my read is 'If it's a normal attack but with a charm, legendary size works' vs 'If it's a big magic blast or spell, legendary doesn't'

[bleak hazel]

I don't think that's how that works, but I admit it's ambiguous

every other "must use magic" clause counts things as petty as excellencies

[tulip folio]

Either way, I'd go to bat about 'Actual Sorcery' bypassing it, as it's perhaps the clearest 'is magic' about. XD

If you can't nuke Godzilla with Death Ray, what does death ray exist for? 😛

[spring lynx]

multiple people can attune to a manse, but only one can claim ownership

[bleak hazel]

oh, nice

so "I attune to the alchemical" is theoretically possible with enough bullshit

[tulip folio]

So my pyramid scheme can involve an actual pyramid, good.

[spring lynx]

now, of course, the question becomes, is the alchemical city attuned to themself

[tulip folio]

Hmm...hmm...

I might tinker with it a hair, though not quite in a 'purely putting a cap on it' way.

[next delta]

The alchemical as the alchemical can probably be considered seperate from the manse even if the alchemical as the city includes the manse?

[spring lynx]

but the thing is, the alchemical is the city

[tulip folio]

Shattering Void Mirror
Cost: 15nm, 1wp
Keywords: Decisive-only, Perilous
Duration: Instant
Throwing his arm out toward her victim in an imperious gesture, the caster speaks words of dark power  The target’s colors appear to invert for a moment as her Essence is juxtaposed with an exact opposite drawn from the Void.

The caster rolls (Wits + Occult) as a decisive attack against an enemy at up to long range, that shakes her target with Oblivion's Grim Cold. This attack is unblockable and undodgeable, but is resisted by targets’ Resolve. This ignores all cover and can affect dematerialized enemies. 

The void's strength is at its greatest when opposing strong life, with a base lethal damage equal to (her Initiative + half of her target's maximum health levels, rounded up. This cannot exceed 10 damage from health levels, or 15 against foes with Legendary Size), and resets her to base Initiative on a successful attack. As long as the spell deals 3+ levels of damage to its target, the target loses Motes equal to 1+ the caster's Essence, the Caster gaining them as Necromantic Motes.

Control: A necromancer with Shattering Void Mirror as their control spell casts no reflection in mundane or mystical mirrors. She cannot be scried on with a magic mirror or pool of water (Though she could with such magic that do not make use of reflections), she cannot have her reflection manipulated and she often requires assistance with her makeup.

It got a cap against 'Human sized but big HP' guys but it also became a more Directly Mystical Attack, hitting against Resolve rather than Parry or Dodge.

So it still busts Behemoths/Big Fuckers but doesn't quite beat up 'He Just Has A Lot of HP' bosses quite so much.

[tulip folio]

Against Faffle it hits as hard as a 10 willpower raptor.

But unlike raptor, it doesn't degrade as you Spend More Willpower.

So it stays useful against Faffle even as the battle goes on.

But against people with 'decent but not insane' health levels it's more like a WP 6-7 raptor, much less impressive/nuke-y

It does make Lunars and Alchemicals a bit sad, as the Exalts Who Like Going Legendary Size.

But...eh, fuck em, just stop going giant against the anti-big-guy spell 😛

[next delta]

Solars win once again

[tulip folio]

I don't think I could avoid that even if I tried.

Solars don't have Notable Traits to target, they're just so genericly good.

If the target has too many annoying dice fuckery charms, this deals aggravated damage

[upper stratus]

sadly, they learn to convert aggravated damage to lethal damage at essence 1 so that doesn't mean much to them

[tulip folio]

Hmm...I should likely do some spell for shadow circle. I've got a void and a lot of ivory tier but no shadows.

[bleak hazel]

meta solars don't really have many ways to approach them that wouldn't mess up everyone else worse

"you can't do any rerolls or add/remove successes after a roll is made" would be the best I could think of on short notice

[tulip folio]

Clearly you make a counterattack that gets much more powerful if it's tick 1 of round 1 😛

[bleak hazel]

lots of "I add 2 successes to my attack after I roll, also heaven thunder hammer, also your attack loses three successes after the fact"

[tulip folio]

...ironically that sort of 'Hey, stop doing cool things' wouldn't be out of place for Necromancy. Just draining potential into the void. XD

But I don't think you're allowed to deisgn 'Oh I hate you so much solars' spells.

[bleak hazel]

if I'd gotten back into Ex3 in time to throw money at the sid book kickstarter I would have been so tempted to ask for some kind of anti-solar button, although probably not in those terms

I was tempted to make "you may not modify rolls after they are made" part of one of the BOKL moves

probably Perfect Ego Juggernaut

you must commit to everything, or it wouldn't be Perfect Ego

[tulip folio]

My pondering on a spell: You put down a zone of 'the oppressive despair of the void'. In that area, people can't spend willpower to add successes to actions/raise static values, nor can you do after-roll dice tricks. XD

So for non-exalts it's still making a zone of 'You can't use heroism to do things'

[bleak hazel]

somewhere in a deep sealed vault under a manse is the notes on some move called something like Iridescent Clouds of Sunset Style that you can use to beat the shit out of Solars

I refuse to believe that zero sids made anti-Solar secret techniques

[fierce star]

'Seven Setting Suns Sutra'

[bleak hazel]

you can disable the infinite solar doomcombo if you prevent them from spending their anima levels, since it's dependent on Peony Blossom Technique

how you would do that before you even get a turn is a little bit tricky

[tulip folio]

Death of Wonder (Shadow Circle)
Cost: 30nm, 1wp
Keywords: None
Duration: One Scene

The Necromancer invokes the nhilistic despair of the Void upon a point within Medium Range until the end of the scene, affecting an area out to Short Range from that point. Within this area, the Sun above is nothing but a ball of flaming gas and heroism means nothing. Characters in the affected area cannot spend willpower to add automatic successes to rolls or to increase static values. In addition, characters cannot reroll dice or add or remove successes from rolls after they are made.

This area is particularly dangerous to creatures of the Wyld, as they exist as creatures of story and imagination. They suffer Aggravated Damage from all sources while within this area as the cold calculations of a clockwork universe cut them like Iron.

[bleak hazel]

wait this also turns off Heavenly Guardian Defence (and many other decisive damage reducers)

very fun

hilariously Sids keep their unique variant of heroic willpower because they can still burn 1m 1wp on TN4 rather than TN5 full excellency

[tulip folio]

I'm kinda being inspired by the end of Hogfather (Hence the fluff about the sun there). XD

[bleak hazel]

I'm not sure that works in 3e because it's never actually specified what the sun is

[tulip folio]

In less 'homebrew' things: How is the Abyssal Sid Martial Art? Did the Bishop make something cool with Albicant Sepulcher of Extinction Style? It seems like a lot but it also seems really mote hungry.

As like 'Hey, you can now counterattack with Rejoice' is cool but also: Rejoice is 10 motes and 1 WP so I don't think you're counterattacking that often with it.

[bleak hazel]

ah, I think this indicates that it is a sun

[bleak hazel]

I have absolutely no idea, but it seems less convenient than most of the others

kind of in the Obsidian Shards mould of "this is a whole bag of expensive capstones" but without the what-the-fuck potential of "clone your opponent", "battlegroup yourself" or Breathing on the Black Mirror

[tulip folio]

Gentle Embrace of the Grave seems like the Biggest, Beefiest Fucking Hit in the game.

But it's also 'Okay but getting there is like mutiple scenes of work unless I'm already beating this guy's ass so hard that I could win without it'.

It feels...Win More.

If that makes sense?

[bleak hazel]

it is really hard to defend against unless your opponent can massively boost both their resolve and defence simultaneously

or has something like Dead Spouse Defence

"grave's embracing someone, buddy, but it isn't going to be me"

[tulip folio]

My positive intimacy towards death: The wife I just shoved into the grave

[bleak hazel]

that's a really cool thematic counter, to be honest

if they hit my Gentle Embrace with that I wouldn't even be mad

[tulip folio]

I would demand to the GM I get my 'If an enemy is incapacitated by this attack, a tomb of spectral Essence forms around his corpse. His soul
withers and decays into nothingness within, which permanently destroys spirits.' on the wife though.

I made the attack and someone died. Wasn't the intended person but still did it 😛

[bleak hazel]

looking through this martial art, it has similar vibes to Obsidian Shards to me

lots of incredibly flashy ways to murder a guy by spooking them, not a huge amount of utility, very expensive

Cerements of Forsaken Flesh is very cool, though - +4 soak and 9 hardness w/ -2 to wound penalties is huge

actually all the E4 stuff is big

yeah, if you're willing to sink Many Motes into getting all this stuff out there you will be a monstrous terror and also will have gone bonfire about three times over

[tulip folio]

I do like the image of the form just giving you a Personal Defensive Tomb. XD

[bleak hazel]

Sids might actually enjoy that one

they don't get much out of all the doom stuff but there's a lot of self-defence in here and some much appreciated damage boosters

[tulip folio]

I also imagine things get Kinda Awkward if other sids ask 'Hey, how did you learn this martial art known and only taught to enemies of the concept of creation itself?'

[bleak hazel]

look, Saturn gives weird hints

they also get Enlightenment on it before Essence 5, and I don't think any Abyssal has actually got there yet

[tulip folio]

The Benignant Annihilator of Hope and Falsehood is the highest essence one I've seen stated and she's both A) One of the first B) A complete fucking murderhobo.

So if any of them are going to be hitting essence 5, she's close to the top of the list but she's sitting at 4.

Mask: "I have a plan. It involves at least three layers of deception and two separate fuckboy antics."
Annihilator:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/839069555015155715/1350820520165380179/image.png?ex=67d8c9e5&is=67d77865&hm=8585fc1e5e8f0020cedd8e1cb213be0c06e7b1c1f8110bad8814c6f9b0d8c3c0&

She's just such a Dusk.

'Even as a quick character, I have an entire page of offensive combat charms. I also have a single non-combat charm, which I will still use in combat because it's about being scary'

[velvet raft]

omg kanako i haven't thought about her in ages

[bleak hazel]

I suppose high essence Solaroid mote pools are massive, so they can kind of afford this stuff

[velvet raft]

@tulip folio Proposal: Kanako as an Infernal

[tulip folio]

Hahahah

[bleak hazel]

Annihilator has made the classic error of picking a heavy weapon, though

gonna clash her to death

[tulip folio]

Looks at A Weeping Raiton Cast Aside

Minor Principle: Even the living deserve ethical treatment. 

Behold, the Least Edgy Abyssal.

[bleak hazel]

raiton is also stamina 1

thin skellington arms

[tulip folio]

...I'm not 100% sure but I think Annihilator might be Manipulation 1.

Appearance 5, Resolve 4, Guile 3 

That is a low guile, so either she's got fuck all manipulation or fuck all socialize or 'very mediocre' both.

[bleak hazel]

5 dice to social influence, but 7 dice to read intentions and 10 dice to senses, which indicates that she has to have perception 4-5 (depending on whether she has a spec or not)

perception 4 means that she has socialize of max 3, which would put manipulation and charisma at 1 or 2

[tulip folio]

Social Influence: 5 dice

...snrk. Okay, yeah. Annihilator is the dusk who went 'I'll put social tertiary and all the dots into appearance because it matters defensively'

[bleak hazel]

the most dusk

note: test Vigil's E3 build against her

Detective Exalted, Exalted Detective must be able to ghostbust

[tulip folio]

Raiton looks like she didn't get the primer on exalted combat with those defensive stats but Vengeful Talon Rebuke lets her at least clash attacks.

Dodge 2, Parry 4 (After the +1 Parry for a Grimcleaver)

[bleak hazel]

raiton is a moonshadow, she doesn't need to fight

my Daybreak is evade 5 also

[tulip folio]

As an aside: Is it just me or is it a bit weird that some artifact versions of weapons lose tags over thier non-artifact version?

Like axes are thrown(short) but grimcleavers can't be thrown and even make note of it.

[fierce star]

huh

that is weird

[prisma sun]

I think it's fine

A grimcleaver is like twice the size and is just not good for throwing anymore

Not even like as a weight issue, just aerodynamically

[tulip folio]

Sure but if you'd like a character that has an axe and throws it too, they're kinda stuffed because they can't have that and it be an artifact.

[coral wraith]

Have it able to be thrown and give a free evocation on attunement where it returns to you afterwards

Easy

[prisma sun]

Artifact weapons always return don't they?

Like, inherently

[coral wraith]

Idk

[coral wraith]

there you go

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah it's just weird that artifacts can lose tags they had as non-artifact versions.

[velvet raft]

Too beeg

[prisma sun]

Slight downside to being a big silly monster hunter weapon

[fierce star]

Y'all it's Exalted, even the base throwing weapons are the size of large dinner plates for the smallest ones

The medium ones can be as long as the thrower is tall

Hurling a lumberjack axe made of sungold built to fell trees the size of cities isn't that out of scale

[velvet raft]

Yeh

I'm just saying that too beeg was probably the rationale because this is core

And core goes weird places

[fierce star]

That's fair

We can always blame h+h for corebook issues lol

... It occurs to me that technically Sovereigns are illegal exigents, aren't they? Like, law-as-written, empowered by a god other than the one who prayed for the Exigence spark.

[bleak hazel]

I believe so, yes

[fierce star]

man, sucks to be a sovereign in the eyes of heaven. Patchwork and illegal. Not that I feel like Heaven has the resources to tut-tut at them, considering they're mostly keeping Uluiru intact.

[bleak hazel]

not like Heaven cares overmuch, yeah

[tulip folio]

To be fair the head of the beauru of humanity is also making very questionable legal ones with the architects.

As they're a mix of her and cityfathers

[bleak hazel]

Realm doesn't either, although I imagine your average deeb is going to get a bit huffy when they meet Even More Arrogant Deebs

I really want to see the Celestial Exigent of Yu-Shan

they would be a pain to homebrew, though, you'd have to individually boost all the architect charms

[fierce star]

I think Architects are very technically not illegal

but that's a loadbearing very technically

the way I imagine DBs in Uluiru is that they are welcomed guests of honor and the Sovereigns would not mind if a few were to marry into Ulu's line, but they're not about to kneel to the princes of the earth because this is not the Realm.

[tulip folio]

I think 'the head of the bureau of humanity will slap you with a skyscraper if you dispute her' is a contributing factor for architects.

[fierce star]

lol

[bleak hazel]

wondering if 4-dot backing labelled "friends with Lytek" is enough justification for my detective Sid having the fate-weaving speciality of "against other Exalts"

his party nickname is "Detective Exalted, Exalted Detective" so I like the idea of making that literal and saying he literally solves Exalt crimes

(also the first things he's going to fight in this campaign are fae, so shows how good he is is at sticking to his lane)

[fierce star]

I mean, that's also part of the Sidereal's job in general, investigating and dealing with the crimes of other exalted against heaven

so, makes sesnse to me

[bleak hazel]

I believe the specialties for that ability are meant to be quite broad anyway

the two examples given are "against enemies of fate" and "at night"

very funny to have a sidereal who is such a night owl they get half-price excellencies when the sun is down

goes to Malfeas, looks up at eternally-burning Ligier
"shit"

[fierce star]

Ligier takes a personal interest in that sid solely because it's amusing

[upper stratus]

there's some agents you just don't deploy in malfeas

[fierce star]

Flaw: Stalked by a third circle, the mailroom is ALWAYS full of letters

[bleak hazel]

each snake writes their own letter

the handwriting is terrible but the volume is impressive

[fierce star]

my next character in a creation-bound game is going to have that flaw now lmao

... it probalby says something about my relationship with demonoloyg in exalted that I'm even considering that, and also that two of my player characters in past games were married to their demonic familiars

[tulip folio]

Death of Wonder (Shadow Circle)
Cost: 30nm, 1wp
Keywords: None
Duration: One Scene

The Necromancer invokes the nhilistic despair of the Void upon a point within Medium Range until the end of the scene, affecting an area out to Short Range from that point. Within this area, the stars above are nothing but balls of flaming gas and heroism means nothing. Characters in the affected area cannot spend willpower to add automatic successes to rolls or to increase static values. In addition, characters cannot reroll dice or add or remove successes from rolls after they are made.

This area is particularly dangerous to Gods and creatures of the Wyld, as they exist as creatures of faith and imagination. They suffer Aggravated Damage from all sources while within this area as the cold calculations of a clockwork universe cut them like Iron.

Dangerously tempted to finish this off but it's likely a bit silly.

[bleak hazel]

this is a fun button but I'm not sure what kind of intimacy they need to cite

is it just Any Intimacy?

[fierce star]

Raw I would say yes, any intimacy

[bleak hazel]

based on the fluff I would assume it's a Be Brave one

[tulip folio]

I'd accept one related to duty too

One that will Keep You Fighting

So RiRi's intimacy towards snacks only applies if snack privileges are on the line

[bleak hazel]

you can combo this one with Force Decision to go "miss anyway, I have a defining intimacy of Fuck You" which is very funny albeit expensive

[bleak hazel]

....does she actually have an intimacy towards snacks?

[tulip folio]

Yep. In Autocthon food variety is low.

So she's very interested in what there is.

[coral wraith]

That's peak

[bleak hazel]

attempting to attract roving alchemicals by waving the peach that Gnomon produces vaguely in their direction

it presumably doesn't make them any longer-lived than they already are but it is a peach

[tulip folio]

I'm realising that Glacier Jade is highly resistant to that charm due to excessive Gokubrain.

Major
Strong Opponents (Excitement)

[bleak hazel]

this is probably a fairly decent rate of peach production for Autocthonia

give it to a metropolis somewhere, they're all high enough essence

the time-stopping metropolis has folded itself up into a really big blue box

[tulip folio]

I'm actually not sure if Alchemicals HAVE a Max Age. At the very least they don't if the reach city.

As that fucker Lux is still about and he's one of the earliest alchs

[bleak hazel]

yeah, I'm pretty sure they don't

[tulip folio]

How is Gnomon as an artifact?

[bleak hazel]

extremely strong

tons of action economy, a little bit of out of combat utility and a repeatable, decently cheap source of unblockable attacks to force your high parry low evasion enemies to either take a lot of hits to the chin or burn a ton of willpower on Block Unblockable

[tulip folio]

Scary

Hit them with thr time stick

[bleak hazel]

it's also a staff, so it works with a lot of regular martial arts + every sidereal one with enough enlightenment

Emerald Gyre (fair enough) and Albicant Sepulcher with no enlightenment

[prisma sun]

Gnommon is I believe one of the most OP artifacts in the ebook

[bleak hazel]

basically whatever you're doing it could be better with more Gnomon

you might not win Join Battle so half the time it's not even for the za warudo

[tulip folio]

The Za Warudo seems useful for combat but short enough it doesn't seem like it does much out of combat.

[bleak hazel]

free action, can be handy

the big one for out of combat is what you get later on, "clash anything, free full excellency"

extremely affordable too, since if your full excellency swing lands you almost certainly get your willpower back

[tulip folio]

...oh right that's not just a combat ability.

[bleak hazel]

it's also nuts in combat depending on what your GM lets you get away with

[tulip folio]

'I draw my sword'
'But how can you if I have it?'

[prisma sun]

Considering Sidreals there's just

so much horse shit you can do

[prisma sun]

Thinking about the Charcoal Spider Spinneret Glove artifacts again

what do you think would be a fun "This is just something the artifact can do" besides "Waive the mote cost for shooting strings"

[bleak hazel]

OK, I just realised they need to spend willpower to resist regardless of whether they have the necessary intimacy, so if you run them completely out you can just keep doing this until they get some more with a stunt regardless of intimacy level required if I read this correctly

kind of niche but since it's only one charm with no prereqs it might be a fun addition to an attrition build for silly whiterooms

[tulip folio]

Are there any evocations currently that let you do a big AOE sword beam/could be the basis for one?

[bleak hazel]

Not that I know of but I don't really look through evocations for AOE attacks, at least one probably exists

worst case scenario you have some max power blaster casting in Stormbringer to pattern on, although that would be 5 dot

[tulip folio]

Light Archery Artifact Weapon

Beautiful Silence ••••
Vitriolic Orichalcum Onslaught Crossbow (Haven't turned up in 3e yet but they *were* the Fast Firing Artifact Crossbow in 2e, so I'm using them for Artifact Hand Crossbows)
Hearthstone Slots: 1 Each (2 Total)

A twin pair of slim and delicate crossbows crafted from Orichalcum, each strung with one of the hairs of Adorjan's daughter with a hero of the first age. Each plucking of their strings sings with a pure note of silence, quieting even loudest battles for a moment.

Tags: Lethal, Archery (Medium), Crossbow, Mounted, One-Handed, Piercing, Concealable

Special: During a Surprise attack, this weapon deals damage as if it was a Medium Artifact Weapon. During an Ambush, it deals damage as if it was a Heavy Artifact Weapon.

Voice-Taking Song
Cost: 2m 1wp; Mins: Essence 2
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Clash, Decisive-only
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: Whatever This Things Gets As An Essence 1 Evocation
The crossbows answer noise with silence, shattering chants and war shouts. 

This Evocation allows the wielder to reflexively clash any action to deliberately create noise (Such as a guard attempting to shout a warning or an attack from a Silver Nightingale martial artist but not actions where sound is only incidental such as a charge with a great sword and a shouted cry) with a custom gambit whose difficulty is determined by the Storyteller, adding a free full Excellency on the attack roll. Outside of combat, the Storyteller may allow the wielder to inflict the effects of the gambit without an Initiative roll. 

Reset: Once per-scene.

Playing about with 'Hey, so light ranged is just generally worse than medium or heavy range, so I can give it a special trick that helps cross that barrier' and also an attempt to make a More Balanced version of Tilting Eternity’s Axis by making it less 'DO EVERYTHING!'

[fierce star]

Oooh

interesting

[fierce star]

... Query: can any non-dragonblooded exalts parry with thrown or archery?

(Furthermore, does alcohol count as a mundane plant based poison)

[bleak hazel]

I don't think so, although you can use melee/brawl/martial arts to calculate your parry if a thrown weapon has those tags or is used by a martial art you have

and Righteous Devil Form allows you to parry and strike in melee by bayoneting people with your firewand

how do deebs get hold of this?

[bleak hazel]

https://theonyxpath.com/champions-of-the-divine-flame-shala-assai/

preview for one of the new exigents

celestial knife enjoyer

she only has charms for five skills, and her dice cap is determined by her rank in the most relevant one, so in practice it's always going to be 8, with an extra +2 if she's using a knife

she also has MDV Knife, and is incredibly good at clashes

[fierce star]

Mantle of Elemental Power, from heirs to the shogunate, upgrade charm for EBA.

3m, 1a, 1wp, simple scene-long

sorry it took a bit to answer, I was in sleeping

it's lore 3 and essence 2, too, so avaliable at chargen

[bleak hazel]

how much does Elemental Bolt Attack usually cost?

I know the Sid equivalent is 3m

[fierce star]

4m

you can spend an anima optionally to make it meidum instead of short range

[bleak hazel]

this is kind of neat actually

earthbender deeb is quite mean

probably not as mean as just beating people with a club, though

also not entirely certain how much damage it does when used as Withering, since it doesn't seem to say what kind of weapon it is

[fierce star]

It's a sidebar above the charm

I don't think it's necessarily a great attack, per se, but

[bleak hazel]

at E2 it's an artifact weapon

not too shabby

[fierce star]

and it will continue to scale, which is nice

I am tempted by both this and the 'you can attack with performance' charm from DB performance to make na artifact guqin that enhances the use of both charms

for reference

[bleak hazel]

I do like that idea, there's an artifact oud in one of the lunar books but it isn't a weapon

[fierce star]

hmm, maybe not a guqin actually, since you'd have to sit to play it properly, but it is traditional for that sort of thing (at least I assume so, given Kung Fu Hustle). On the other hand, exalted... ... On the gripping hand, performance is wood based... okay nevermind the juice is flowing, brb going to nourish it

[bleak hazel]

shredding my enemies with my artifact hurdy-gurdy

[fierce star]

Hurdy Gurdies are for Lunars and Exigents. I will not explain my logic.

[bleak hazel]

I assumed they were for Alchemicals

[dense verge]

hurdy gurdy man exigent...

[tulip folio]

Alchemicals play the Theremin.

[bleak hazel]

I have been pondering a four-armed alchemical to go along with Detective Sidereal and while giving him four swords is tempting, so is instrument in two arms and weapons in the others

I may give him a hurdy-gurdy

how are their performance-equivalent charms, anyway?

[prisma sun]

She hurdy my gurdy until I exigent

[fierce star]

Theremins are actually canon in autochthon, yeah

and hteir performance-equivalent charms aren't bad, generally? Appearance has a lot of good shit, so does charisma. Id on't think they have anything that specifically calls out performance but you can be your own lightshow

[tulip folio]

Yeah, most of their social charms are 'When using X attribute'

Generally with a 'this also works with the other two social attributes if you've got their stat improvement charm too'

[fierce star]

hmm, does elemental bolt attack work better with archery or thrown...

[prisma sun]

Don't think there's a "better" independent of how you attack otherwise

[tulip folio]

Well, I guess it depends how the Dragonblooded Thrown and Archery trees are?

[fierce star]

reading through archery now, it's very 'if you aim, the charm gets better'

has a hilarious excellency, though

[fierce star]

arhcery: lots of 'when aim, get bonus', defensive charms, lots of clashing

but the defensive stuff is entirley against other ranged attackers

🤔

the problem with thrown is it has a lot of stuff reliant on uh

having a physical weapon

which obviously elemental bolt attack isn't

but i feel like that's... ugh, DBs are still written mostly in natural language

can EBA attacks embed in armor? Is that allowed within the rules? (see this charm for why asking)

[coral wraith]

Occult

"Do kinda magical attack" is always under Occult, afaik

[fierce star]

EBA explicilty works with archery and thrown charms

[coral wraith]

oh you're not talking about homebrew

[coral wraith]

Depends on the element? Earth could

[tulip folio]

Stick them with shards of ice 😛

[fierce star]

I feel like I'd probably ask individual GMs. I'd feel like it'd be reasonable to allow it with any EBA, personally. EBA isn't bad but at a mote an attack (at best) it adds up fast, especially compared to 'just have an artifact weapon or a ludicrous amount of cheap throwing weapons'? Especially since compared to an artifact weapon AFAIK there's no way to develope evocations for it

i think overall though archery is the better choice over thrown for EBA

[tulip folio]

PIty that EBA isn't a valid weapon for any of the Dragon Martial Arts 😛

[prisma sun]

I still love that Deebs get like

"Original Dragon Ball Kamehameha"

[spring lynx]

wait, they do?

[bleak hazel]

I think at least a couple of those could obviously work with EBA, especially Armour-Rupturing Fang

the persistent weapon thing is a little trickier because it occupies an artifact weapon if you're using one for it and you have no provision to keep spending motes to create more Bolt Attacks

[fierce star]

yeah

[prisma sun]

Yeah they have a charm that's an upgrade of the Elemental Bolt that lets them like

blow up cities

I forget which

[bleak hazel]

As In The Beginning, I think

upgraded Dragon Vortex Attack

[prisma sun]

YE

[bleak hazel]

if you have one deeb of each element, one of which knows that charm, you can blast everything within about five miles with a thunderstorm, earthquake, forest fire, tsunami and poisonous doom pollen eruption all at once

[prisma sun]

https://i.imgur.com/9WSLDo5.png

[spring lynx]

...it's a lore charm

[tulip folio]

I do like how it gives you a cast timer above the DB's head 😛

[spring lynx]

that explains why i couldn't find it

i assumed it would be in, say, a combat tree, or at the very least occult

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/final-fantasy-limit-gif-15265843

[bleak hazel]

deeb trees, while not quite as odd as Sidereal trees, do have some theming that's a little bit off the standard solar set

Lore is, among other things, the elemental bending tree

[tulip folio]

I know Solars have a 'fuck that city' charm and I imagine sids have one.

Do Lunars get one?

[spring lynx]

sids used to have a "actually that city was never in range for you to fuck" charm, i don't know if they still do

[bleak hazel]

Neighborhood Relocation Scheme remains the dodge capstone

[spring lynx]

all's right in the world then

[bleak hazel]

I really want to see a Sid use that to literally suplex a metropolis at some point

sids can use max athletics to tear down a fortress if they have to, but generally a high essence sidereal doesn't need charms to kill a city

they have Frequency 5 Sidereal Prophecy