Exalted

[fierce star]

I think the only time I've used an out of the book artifact was when I was playing a dawn-caste solar katana duelist type, MA supernal with shining point so I grabbed shining ice mirror because it was kind of Exactly What I Wanted especially given they were a dynast

and could then reasonably pretend to be a particularly disciplined dragonblooded

*single point

[bleak hazel]

I like how the attunement bonus on that one is "hey, Sid Melee, you want to be the most broken thing on the planet?" and then says "solars only"

accidentally proofed against cheese

[fierce star]

Yeah technically all the core book artifacts are solars only

[bleak hazel]

locking the cheese in the cheese caves by accident

[bleak hazel]

(this is actually a place I was at recently, although this isn't my picture - Skyrim-ass location)

[fierce star]

though I think one specifies 'solars or lunars' in it's specific description

yeah, Moonlit Huntress

also nice

love me a cheese cave

[bleak hazel]

it looks so much like someone just scattered random skyrim props around a real cave, it's hilarious

I believe most games allow people to Un-Solarify stuff from Arms of the Chosen but I am kind of OK leaving most of the core stuff in the solars-only box

moonlit huntress is certainly a weapon that you can use

[prisma sun]

Core stuff yeah

But I would bap someone for saying the Starmetal and Moonsilver our Soulsteel shit can't be used by the Resonant people

[bleak hazel]

yeah

[fierce star]

what do we have MM wise in core anyway. Lemme count it up...

Ori 4
Moonsilver  1
Jade 3 (blue, green, red)
Starmetal 1
Soulsteel 1

making solars resonant with everything was a mistake

[prisma sun]

I do feel like we harp on Solars excessively but genuinely why do rules just not apply to them

[bleak hazel]

there's a bit of fluff somewhere about the Realm guarding orichalcum deposits, which mechanically is completely pointless because all ori does that jade does not is to signal to all and sundry "hey, I'm an anathema, come kill me!"

[bleak hazel]

corebook syndrome, I think

[prisma sun]

I'm also saying this as like

[bleak hazel]

but it is a bit odd when the deeb block sells deebs as "masters of evocations" because they're resonant with all jade and "masters of martial arts" due to getting Immaculate arts in the same book as all the solar stuff

[prisma sun]

in general to the conceit

why is this part of Exalted's bones that the Solars are just 5 steps up

[fierce star]

Orichalcum technically has different artifact thematics than the various flavors of jade, so in theory two artifacts that are otherwise exactly the same other than one is red jade and one is orichalcum should have different themes to their evocations, but

[bleak hazel]

I do think that the one thing that is pitched quite well is the martial arts - I sometimes grumble that there should be cooler enlightenment effects on some SMAs, but a maxed out Sidereal martial artist and a maxed out Solar martial artist are going to be basically in the same league, with some styles better suited for solar mote pools or Sid tech

if the gap between Solar charm trees and everyone elses' was actually similar to the gap between standard and Mastery MA, I think it would be very smooth

[prisma sun]

I'm fine with mastery I just dont' like Terrestial

[fierce star]

I know it results in 'the same martial art at different tiers' but I did like the terrestrial/celestial/sidereal split over the terrestrial/neutral/mastery sidereal/enlightenment split we have now

[prisma sun]

I am generally fine with "these people do it better" but I dislike "these people do it worse"

the latter feels like punching down

[upper stratus]

terrestrial/neutral/mastery means they don't need to rush out a shitload more styles in order to make sure every tier of exalts has a wide variety of options available

[fierce star]

Oh, yeah, like I get why it's been done

because like, golden exhalation/righteous devil were juts 'the same MA at different levels' to go with an easy example, covering a lot of the same ground

[prisma sun]

To me Terrestial's framing just feels bad

[fierce star]

but that doesn't mean I have to like it, y'know?

[prisma sun]

"Here's a bunch of cool shit! Also if you're one of the lame dudes, here's how you suck more than everyone else"

"Also if you're one of the COOL dudes, here's how you're better than everyone else"

[velvet raft]

I'm just not comfortable doing homebrew

[fierce star]

That's entirely fair, I wasn't trying to make it sound like I felt like I was superior or whatever, I was more just noting a pattern that surprised me

because most TTRPG groups I'm in go all-in, neck-deep on homebrew as soon as we understand the system well enough, lol

[velvet raft]

Naw, I mean I think I'm somewhat representative

A lot of folks just don't feel good doing it

[fierce star]

nods

[velvet raft]

Ultimately if I were in a game with Thousand Blades or something I would

But I would also feel weird about it

[bleak hazel]

I do think the Immaculate styles could have provided a slightly less awkward way around Terrestrial, but I can't think of a good one right this minute

[prisma sun]

Homebrewing Exalted is like if you had to homebrew 10 D&D 5e classes for one character

[fierce star]

It's not that bad

or, like

do you mean a specific exalted type

becuase if so then yes, and I am a madman for it

[prisma sun]

I mean like if you want to do a whole homebrew thing

[fierce star]

but like an artifact or a MA is more like... half a class for an artifact, maybe two-thirds for an MA?

[prisma sun]

a full artifact is like an entire class for an artifact

[bleak hazel]

charm design is a bastard, which is why I'm never making an exigent

but a few artifacts is doable

[fierce star]

And then there's me, who has two ongoing projects, one of which is 'an exigent' and the other of which is 'an entire fucking attribute-based exalt'

(I'm still working on Aurorals!)

[bleak hazel]

every time someone in one of my groups has gone "I want to do an Exigent" I go "have you considered taking a bunch of martial arts moves/spells/evocations to decrease the number of charms we have to balance on the fly" and they invariably go "nah, I want to do my thing in particular"

[velvet raft]

Oh, btw, on the off-chance I get to play Hurricane of Goremauls, which I might, what are some attunement bonuses people think might be fitting?

[prisma sun]

If I made my Sword Saint I'd probably crib a lot off Single Point and evocations

I will admit fully that I love the idea of playing my Sidreal Sword Telekinesis bastard

[fierce star]

It depends on like, the theme for the goremauls in particular, but usually 'awaken the first evocation' or 'get some bonus to a combat stat or skill while wielding it' would be in the ballpark

I still like the idea of Swarms With Goremauls being a taiko drummer, but it's your character not mine

[velvet raft]

The character more generally I'm envisioning was an Immaculate experiment that got canceled because she's Rosmontis from Arknights

I suspect at least some of the goremauls were made for the project

[bleak hazel]

at least one should have some form of feat-of-strength attunement bonus for smashing stuff

because come on, you have six goremauls

[velvet raft]

https://arknights.wiki.gg/images/c/c4/Rosmontis.png?1caa69&format=original This is Rosmontis btw those floating things are the big fuckin' slabs she telekinetically rams into people

[limpid badge]

I’m still having fun with Bloody Hand getting Gorgon’s venom as another neat tool

[bleak hazel]

if they're big rectangles of metal, my first thought is also something like "inscribe some kind of goal on the side of your Big Sword, use it as an intimacy for social stuff"

[limpid badge]

I love… poisons….

[bleak hazel]

write litany on blade

Faith's Pillar lets you boost your own intimacies but that's not quite the same thing

[velvet raft]

Oh, true, they could be like ... pillars with Immaculate philosophy/history inscribed on them

That would work

There are five of them, maybe one is aligned to each legendary founding figure?

[bleak hazel]

you could grab Faith's Pillar and then make X Jade versions for the other four

[velvet raft]

Aye

Could probably just remove the "you must be House Mnemon" requirement from Faith's Pillar and duplicate it

[bleak hazel]

I was about go "hmm, what if combo move capstone evocation that all five share" but then I realised that by normal evo standards that would require 300 xp

5 evos per artifact x 5 x 12xp each

[velvet raft]

Isn't it 10?

Or is it higher for deebs?

Only 250 :D

[bleak hazel]

12 for deebs, since Resonant evocations are probably going to be stronger than deeb charms

[velvet raft]

Tragic

Might be fitting, though

To go hard on evocations

[velvet raft]

Thinking about attunement bonuses

• Wrath of Mela: Bonus to attacking beyond Close range?
• Judgment of Pasiap: Evocations are considered Earth charms for Aura purposes?
• Fury of Hesiesh: Something happens on Join Battle?
• Disregard of Daana'd: Something to do with feats of demolition?
• Contempt of Sextes Jylis: Something defensive?

[fierce star]

Sextes Jylis is the wood one right? Just making sure I'm not misremembering while phoneposting

[velvet raft]

Ye

[fierce star]

what if it has [essence] flowers that bloom when you roll join battle and you can expend one to get [bonus] on parry

[velvet raft]

Hm, that could be fun

[fierce star]

also, one of them should have evocations that enhance the essence bolt attack line, up to and including the 'make a disaster' one, because 'floating goremauls turn into a beam cannon' is peak fiction

absolute cinema

[prisma sun]

Agreed

[fierce star]

Hmm. Have a splat with a lot of 'everyone in [range]' buffs you can apply to others, wiht acess to transcendent anima, with a generic splat anima ability that is 'turn every instance of 'range' for a charm with the BUFFPEOPLEGOOD tag into 'anyone who can see your anima before expending it' that requires you to expend your transcendent anima level?

[velvet raft]

While this would make sense, it wouldn't really line up with the use of Thousand Blades, since that has a ranged attack ... unless it somehow combined the two?

[fierce star]

:>

[velvet raft]

Still thinking about these damn hammers

I like the five elements idea but hm

Water could relate to pressure, crashing waves, weight, that kind of stuff

Maybe erosion

[fierce star]

Erode the enemy's soak and hardness?

[velvet raft]

Could make sense

Water Dragon Style has its focus on wound penalties along similar thematic lines

[tulip folio]

Would be fun to see like 'The target's soak and hardness is reduced by 2x wound penalty' or something.

Alchs have something like that with Onslaught Penalties.

Where they can penalize soak by onslaught

[limpid badge]

hiii can anyone name an elder bluesid

[upper stratus]

sincerely can't think of any

[limpid badge]

fuck

[merry arch]

yeah that's something i was trying to google the other day and coming up completely blank HAHAHAHAHA

[upper stratus]

i thought ayesha ura but i misremembered and she's yellow

also she's younger this edition

[coral wraith]

are there any in previous editions?

[upper stratus]

shajah holok

he's not explicitly mentioned to be blue in his 3e write up but he was in older editions

[tulip folio]

The Bronze Faction's Strongest Ideological Soldier - Doesn't actually care about it.

[merry arch]

WHAT

[upper stratus]

my detached therapist king

[velvet raft]

This seems to be a bit of a running theme with Bronze

[upper stratus]

"im here due to ideological inertia" is a pretty baller theme to me

[coral wraith]

yeah, it's sorta like

they've done their part. now they're here to tend the embers as it were

[upper stratus]

"if i don't keep this shit going all the sacrifices i made out of others will be for nothing!"

[velvet raft]

Similarly Anys Syn is described as being committed to the Bronze Faction, but mainly in the sense that she thinks the Sids are responsible for what happens, and that she doesn't actually care much about the anti-Solar and anti-Lunar policy

[upper stratus]

my goat

[tulip folio]

Chejop dealing with other Sids.

Anys Syn/Shajah Holok: "Yes."

[velvet raft]

I think it kinda tracks?

[upper stratus]

arada: "yes"
ketchup" "are y-"
arada: "lets go golden faction baybee love da golds"

[velvet raft]

Like, a lot of the Elders of the Bronze faction are tired, the context they're working in has changed, and while they've still got these social and political attachments a lot of the ideology is Chejop making grandiose statements that they don't feel all that committed to

Yes they still do stuff and yes they're still powerful but some of them are only really sticking around out of a generalized sense of loyalty

[coral wraith]

chejop is a true believer in a faction full of people that are here out of obligation or duty

[velvet raft]

And the moment is coming when everyone starts to collectively realize how little everyone else still cares about the specifics

[upper stratus]

it's also rhe majority faction which means there's a fair amount of people there on a "it's the least amount of effort politically speaking" basis

[velvet raft]

Yeah

It's even mentioned with like ... Division of Battles, at least, I think?

The prominent sid mentioned there is stated to be more Gold-aligned than anything

[upper stratus]

radiant sky (division of journeys) is a good example

[velvet raft]

But he sorta treads the Bronze party line for political expedience

I think there's a few mentions of stuff like that

just so long as those gold faction pricks don't win either

[coral wraith]

Gold Faction gangg

[velvet raft]

I find it very funny that the rest of the Gold Faction is a little weirded out by Ayesha Ura being a true believer in the Illuminated

[bleak hazel]

Holok actually does have fairly distinct political commitments as I understand it, they're just to the Immaculate Faith rather than the other bits of the Bronze agenda per se

also apparently all the Sid elders are getting some part of the Anys Syn treatment regarding character sheets, they have combo charms by default

"bluesids are really good at brawling" seems to be a theme between him and Iron Siaka

[fierce star]

I mean of all the fights I've been in, the ones I enjoyed the most where the drawn-out, knuckle bleeding street fights between me and a friend when we were both drunk, so

tracks

[tulip folio]

Messing about with that 'Tinker with heavy weapons to make them more interesting' and pondering some keywords that mostly show up on heavy weapons to go 'Hey, this weapon does X well'.

Trash: This weapon gains +2 accuracy against Prone Targets.

A Trash Heavy Weapon (Looking at it for Pickaxes) has the same accuracy as a Medium weapon...if the target is prone. XD

Basicly pondering some 'In X situation, get Y bonus' keywords

[velvet raft]

@limpid badge This feels like it supports some ideas you've had :D

[bleak hazel]

Every Sid type will get their own martial arts style in the Sid companion, so we will see Cerulean Lute Style

[velvet raft]

Excellent

[bleak hazel]

Golden Barque style is apparently tanky and smashy

no word on Crimson Panoply style yet

[prisma sun]

lmao

Drifts in Gossamer:

https://tenor.com/view/spongebob-wall-break-rage-gif-8957717

Journeys being the big smashy ones is so funny

[velvet raft]

Goremaul attunement benefits thought

Shattering Frost: Inflicts doubled onslaught penalty per attack, and makes it so the opponent only clears half their onslaught penalty from this weapon (rounded up)

Too much? Too little?

[tulip folio]

I think the 'only clears half' pushes it a bit far.

A Heavy Weapon getting double onslaught doesn't super bother me as it misses more than most weapons.

[bleak hazel]

Yeah, double is extremely good by itself

[prisma sun]

Doesn't fit the name of it though

[velvet raft]

It’s supposed to be weakening the opponent with cold

What I’ve settled on is that four of the mauls relate to elementally-aspected kinds of destruction, and the earth maul has stuff related to tossing around the rubble from the other four

[prisma sun]

Chill of Winter
Siphoning Frost
something like that

Shattering implies you're gonna freeze and smash something

[velvet raft]

Freezing and brittleness for air, melting for fire, roots breaking something up for wood, pressure carving stuff for water

And then the earth maul doing magic kintsugi stuff

[prisma sun]

Looked up the Unconquered Sun in the Sid book to see if there's other names for him

and it's so funny how he nepotizes the fuck out of his kids

And how many he has

[velvet raft]

Dude's a Roman emperor

[bleak hazel]

Rival, probably

[mighty rover]

gottem

[bleak hazel]

still one of my favourite Sid Craft charms

it's only 1wp too, no mote commitment

[velvet raft]

I love when Sid charm trees have at best conceptual links to their actual abilities

[bleak hazel]

hey, you're very directly crafting artifact weapons

it's arguably the most practical one there

[velvet raft]

Aye, I'm just thinking about the Craft (wife) line

[mighty rover]

wait what is this charm called

[bleak hazel]

Sword-Queen's Foretold Blade

[mighty rover]

AMAZING

[bleak hazel]

you can't give them to mortals unless they somehow have a mote pool (god-bloods, etc.) but it's still Press Button, Receive Daiklaive

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/muffin-button-muffins-gif-11216392

[velvet raft]

Would a clash bonus for an attunement bonus be more sensible with a Heavy weapon?

[bleak hazel]

it would, but I would strongly recommend just not fucking around with non-charm accuracy bonuses on any artifact

[velvet raft]

That's fair

[bleak hazel]

cost-free capbreaking effects are basically the best thing you can ever get

[velvet raft]

I'd like to do some clash stuff on the earth goremaul but it would be at a pretty heavy disadvantage due to low accuracy

[bleak hazel]

this is Thousand Blades, right?

[velvet raft]

Yeah

I know it has clashing in the pinnacle charm

[bleak hazel]

you're already fine on that scope, you're using multiple two-handed weapons so you get the dual wield and two-handed bonuses simultaneously and shoot up to +4 on decisive clashes, +5 on withering

best decisive clash setup it's possible to have without attack-boosting charms specifically

[velvet raft]

Oh, wait, you do get the dual wield bonuses

Shit that's cool

[chilly sluice]

so for a DB what are some good MA that still work well as a Terrestrial?

[bleak hazel]

Water/Air/Earth Dragon are all very solid, Righteous Devil will cause no complaints (although it is a bit nuts with Mastery), Violet Bier doesn't suffer too much

especially if you have a Dragon Form that you can use to disable Terrestrial for Death-Parrying Stroke

water derg to Bottomless Depths Defence + Violet Bier would be my default approch to Terrestrial Swordsaint, although the compatibility on some of the attack charms means you might be punching sometimes

Thousand Blades is also very good but that's just because 1kblades has huge numbers everywhere in general

[wise ocean]

deebs do have substantial difficulty generating artifacts for Arsenal, though

[prisma sun]

just buy them

[wise ocean]

DB circle poking their crafter to occasionally produce a 3* isn't reaching the heights of Abyssal Craftman stretching and accidentally making 20 4* artifacts

[prisma sun]

what are you, some anathema peasant

[bleak hazel]

deebs are very much going "OK, I start with three artifacts and we'll go from there" with all those merit dots

[prisma sun]

Deebs have the benefit of their families consistently cranking out artifacts for over a thousand years

[chilly sluice]

Blades is definitely tempting, but I don't know if I wanna figure out that many artifacts haha

[chilly sluice]

I'll keep this in mind too

[bleak hazel]

if you're going to dip an Immaculate Art, water dragon is just so solid

there's a bunch of great tech in there

I'm not sure deebs have any other way to turn off ongoing enemy charms

[prisma sun]

Erm, misc?
Heh think u r mistaken?
Water isn't a solid
Its.....
A liwuidd........

[bleak hazel]

Shining Ice Mirror, freeze this man

[velvet raft]

Buy them at character creation :D

That's what mine is doing

5 goremauls

[velvet raft]

So, if you plan to go heavy on martial arts with a deeb, you definitely want to take your native dragon style up to its form charm

Beyond that stuff that only has the terrestrial tag on things you'll be using on your turn is good

[bleak hazel]

a lot of reflexive clash/counterattack charms have Terrestrial: Counts as your attack for the round

those are usually the gold standard for what to spend your aura on, because that's an extra swing right there

[velvet raft]

Spend and regain your aura every turn is pretty organic to do

[upper stratus]

you can always get into your own aspect's aura by spending 1m on your anima power which is nice i think

[velvet raft]

Aye, and with the dragon style you almost certainly have some charm or other you can use on any given round

[velvet raft]

(From Northern Ursid in Hundred Devils Night Parade) - This seems pretty solid as something to invest in for a high-appearance Lunar with Hideous

[fierce star]

Hrm

can someone check this: apparently regardless of what your miles/kilometers per hour might be, you are stuck at moving one range band per turn even outside of combat?

someone is arguing that any solar with Racing Hare Method (lets them move 3 range bands per turn outside of combat) can outpace any lunar in any form becuase lunars are always stuck to 1 range band/turn

[prisma sun]

Yeah that's not how it works

[bleak hazel]

range bands do not exist outside of combat, Racing Hare Method is written in such a way as to be nonfunctional

stick a vaguely plausible Heroic Speed number on it if you must, I think there's one in one of the many Ask The Devs threads

[fierce star]

yeah, thought so

also a comment several posts down in the thread solidified the guy as a troll so I was going to discard the opinion anyway once I'd read it

[bleak hazel]

where is this exactly?

I like reading silly rules interpretations

[fierce star]

Somewhere I'm not allowed to talk about on this server

sorry

[tulip folio]

You can just say /tg/ mate. It's a shitty place in many ways but a lot of people have been there at some point or another. XD

[fierce star]

oh, well, fair enough

yeah the exalted general thread on /tg/

on 4chan, specifically, not any other imageboard, I might live in an ocean of piss but I have standards.

They're low, but they're still there

[tulip folio]

Like please don't recommend people go there but it's not Beetlejuice, where the notorious hacker 4chan will turn up if someone says '/tg/ exists and has stupid opinions on games' 😛

[wise ocean]

4chan is still alive? Damn.

[fierce star]

Mmm hmm. Went down recently to an exploit caused by their own damn fault, but came back up after a couple weeks of rapidly patching decade-old code nad updating decade and a half old hardware.

[bleak hazel]

well, there are only about four places other than here that people regularly Talk About Exalted, so I assumed it was there anyway

[fierce star]

lol

[tulip folio]

Nah, clearly it was a Secret Exalted Community, hiding in the shadows.

[fierce star]

I refuse to participate in exalted government conspiracies

[mighty rover]

^not a sidereal

[fierce star]

You can trust me, I am wearing my 'I am not a sidereal' lapel pin and everything

[velvet raft]

The only sid I trust less than one I can't see is one I can

[fierce star]

lunar disguising themselves as a sidereal by being way too obvious about how not a sidereal they are

[bleak hazel]

aha, it was me, the double super triple reverse Sidereal the entire time! Ways of Exaltation!

(I was not trying to be a double super triple reverse Sidereal, I was trying to powergame by pretending to be a Full Moon and it got out of hand)

[tulip folio]

Hmmm...hmm...

[fierce star]

An entire circle that's just a bunch of exalts pretending to be another type of exalt

exactly one of them is a sidereal; he's pretending to be mortal

[tulip folio]

Do you think it would be unreasonable for a spell to be able to interact with exalts of a particular type?

Basicly: Pondering a 'set up protective wards' ritual and making a list of things you can choose to make 'This has a hard time getting in'. So like there's Dead, Demons, Gods etc but I'm pondering if 'X exalt type' is something a spell could be set up. Anti-Solar Energies etc 😛

It wouldn't be 'can never enter' but it would be 'Well, this Takes Some Effort'

[fierce star]

I'd allow it

I'd also make the efficiency of it inverse to how powerful the exaltation is, so DBs only have to expend a minor bit of will to bypass it by solars have to make an Actual Effort

[tulip folio]

Anti-Creatures of Darkness/Enemies of Fate would work on Several Exalt types but I kinda want Assholes to have an option to set up 'Stay out of the demon fort, heaven guys' as an option too. XD

[fierce star]

what you could do

is have anti-god work on sidereals, anti-elemental work on dbs, anti-death work on abyssals, anti-demon work on infernals, anti-fae work on lunars, anti-automaton work on alchemicals, and any of 'em work on solars but to less effect or osmething

[mighty rover]

learning a lot

[tulip folio]

Sids: "Please, watch this." bounces 3 assassinations off walls to make it so that they end up promoted due to the death of some random guy in another city

[mighty rover]

Imperial Magistrates are fascinating btw
they don't feel quite like Designated PCs because they don't have an obvious (mulit-Exalt) party structure, but they feel ready-made for a mentor or something

[prisma sun]

Sids can't even legally get promoted

[velvet raft]

Don't they normally have a bunch of aides?

[fierce star]

Imperial Magistrates are kind of the like, non-wyld hunt 'generic PC group' for a pure dragonblooded/terrestrial game

[tulip folio]

Hmm...pondering at 'ward an area to keep out supernatural stuff'. Set a difficulty or make it an opposed roll?

[velvet raft]

There’s precedent for it in deeb occult

Salt and something warding

Might want to take a look at that for inspiration

[tulip folio]

That sounds fun. I'm planning on doing two of these. One as a Real Spell and one of them as a Thaumaturgy ritual that's a lot less beefy.

[bleak hazel]

In the Usurpation, Daughter of First Frost hunted the Dragon-Blooded betrayers from Neritoum’s helm until it fell to the starmetal warstrider Saint of Dooms Foretold

from Many-Faced Strangers

show me the starmetal warstrider game

put Anys Syn in the warstrider, she can handle it

[tulip folio]

Does anyone other than Alchemicals right now have a good access to Legendary Size + Martial Arts at the same time?

[bleak hazel]

any martial art compatible with heavy armour can be used by a warstrider, and Syn has PAOC Form, she can make any martial art compatible with heavy armour

[next delta]

Time to re-enact G-Gundam

[bleak hazel]

Lunars can use Mountainous Spirit Expression to give their DBT shape Legendary Size

and DBT is MA-OK

[tulip folio]

Huh, PAOC can make any martial art heavy-armour okay? Man, PAOC does fucking everything.

[bleak hazel]

ignore the last sentence if the combat ability benefits from an Enlightenment charm, which makes it count as MA for PAOC Form

so you can slam PAOC Form, include Maiden-On-The-Shelf Form as one subform and then use the other two martial arts with any melee gear, including heavy armour

the main downside to doing this is that between the warstrider, PAOC Form and the inevitable Ways of Exaltation efficiency adder you have committed 50 motes

you kind of have to be Anys Syn to do this and still have enough motes left over to fight, unless you're E5 and using Ways of Exaltation, World-Shaping Artistic Vision, Heroic Essence Replenishment and maybe Violet Bier at the same time to gain motes from defending

[tulip folio]

Here is an odd pondering: I know we're not getting any Sid charms in the sid expansion (Boo, boo) but what areas would sids want more charms?

[bleak hazel]

I want one more craft dice booster, because being dodgy on 5-dots at Essence 5 is kind of odd even with the daiklaive printer

otherwise honestly I'm good

the other gaps I can think of are meant to be there, Sid abilities having strange theming is important to them

a way to enlighten one particular martial art into an SMA so I can use crane gear with my SMA of choice would be good, although the need for that will decrease as more SMAs come out with different weapon options

[prisma sun]

I didn't really see anything that I'd really see as a glaring omission yeah

[bleak hazel]

I feel there's definitely the potential for more cool sidereal charms but they don't need more

[tulip folio]

I wouldn't mind some more Sid Integrity charms that focus on their 'hopeful intimacy' subfocus.

As that gets a lot less pagecount than the 'Remember the mission' sacrifices intimacy side of integrity for them.

[bleak hazel]

ah, fun thing for craft - charm selections and probabilities of doing certain artifacts for all the splats

https://swordofcreation.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1080

Sids: "you guys need to buy charms for this?"

in practice you need at least one other charm to enable your crafting stuff + two more to rush artifact construction + one more that gets you craft (artifacts) for a discount, but a grand total of 7 charms for a max artifact crafting suite is pretty neat

eight if you want to spend craft XP on prophecies

pick up Mending Warped Designs, Sword-Queen's Foretold Blade and Unravelled Skein Insight (if you really want to make tons of artifacts) and you're go for a neat 10 charm + prayer strip charm setup at E5

alternatively, grab the six charms in the Craft (Wife) subtree, the heal charm, WSAV, forge-and-spindle and the diplomacy charm, make a couple of artifact 2s and 3s for white points using no charms whatsoever and spend those to run the daiklaive printer

two charm artifact 5 beats everyone

the only issue is getting gold points for your cheap stuff without "I rush projects and do them all in 0.2 seconds" tech

[fierce star]

I just had a dumb thought: is there any precedent for gaining craft XP from someone else making things on your behalf?

[bleak hazel]

there is precedent in the opposite direction, in that the Sid daiklaive printer grants no XP because you didn't do any of the work

Fortuitious Fellowship does grant you a bunch of gold points for working with the groups you've produced, but really at that point the group itself is your craft product

(it's also a Charisma + Craft roll, so if you spend 2wp 5m on it you can get 13-14 gold points a story, very good deal)

[prisma sun]

I feel like you could get xp for like

Your workshop making things

[wise ocean]

Sids get Wise Workshop Administration Practice, Abyssals get Sweatshop Overlord Technique

[fierce star]

nods

[fierce star]

Hmm. My idea's probably too much for a GM to keep track of, admittedly. I had a vague thought of a tiger warrior equivalent charm for the aurorals that lets you train people in non-combat things, with an upgrade that if you train them as a craftsman for every project they complete you get (half? a third?) of their craft XP. They'd still be mortals so you wouldn't get The Good Craft XP, but

[tulip folio]

Honestly, I'd just Set A Rate Of Income based on the number of dudes that are trained and actively working on things.

[fierce star]

that's legit

[timber rover]

@hidden elm

[fierce star]

Hmm. There's nothing saying that I AM existed in ex3's version of the first age, but there's also nothing saying that it didn't. I wonder what's more interesting.

[mighty rover]

I don't know that lore yet

[prisma sun]

What is I AM

[fierce star]

I AM was the internet in the first age, except it was also an artificial intelligence that served as a personal aide/companion to all the celestial exalted and high ranking terrestrials

[prisma sun]

I imagine a version of that could still probably be Canon just on a smaller scale

[fierce star]

I like the idea of the ex3 version not having been sapient up until just before the calibration massacre just as that 'any particularly complex program in fiction inevitably tends towards AI' trope, but the core processor has been hidden under mount meru this whole time just Thinking.

[next delta]

Though "we made the thing intelligent" is something sorcerer's like to do

They probably used fish spirits or bound demons to take care of the series of tubes

[fierce star]

lol

[next delta]

I like it being tubes because a) lol and b) it means any damaged caused all the essence or whatever to leak out so it's extra hard to fix

[prisma sun]

I also would imagine if it became canon again they'd change the name

[mighty rover]

i'd kinda hope so yeah

[fierce star]

Ah? I think it's supposed ot be a philosophical reference, yeah? Cogito Ergo Sum?

[prisma sun]

Well

no

https://tenor.com/view/am-i-have-no-mouth-and-i-must-scream-am-ihnmaims-am-hate-hate-speech-gif-1392574611171398983

it's literally just "I put a letter in front of AM"

[fierce star]

Honestly their characterizations were so different I don't think it's a harlan ellison reference

[prisma sun]

c'mahn

it's a White Wolf book

[fierce star]

It had that name becuase in universe those were the first words it spoke on obtaining sapience

it's either a rene descartes reference or an abrahamatic religion reference at the core

if it is name checking IHNMAIMS it is in name only

[mighty rover]

i was thinking the Abrahamic reference first and that would also be a reason to change the name imo

[dense verge]

honestly in most other contexts i'd put an allcaps I AM as a "I am the great I am" thing, but honestly with white wolf i'd peg it at a AM thing since its an AI

[fierce star]

I just don't think it gets much more like

literally as soon asi t began truly thinking for itself it's words were 'I am'

literally cogito ergo sum

[dense verge]

could be a mix of things

[fierce star]

Yeah, most things are, but the most obvious reference here really seems to be rene descartes.

the abrahamatic reference secondarily and the harlan ellison like. in name only if at all?

[tulip folio]

Also: I think having an Abrahamic reference wouldn't really be an issue. I mean...CeCe is there providing manna from the desert and we have Ifrits, islamic spirits. XD

[prisma sun]

I mean AM's name is also a reference to Cogito Ergo Sum

[fierce star]

And two things can't reference the same thing from different sources?

[tulip folio]

CeCe's entire theme is 'You will have no gods before me'. XD

[fierce star]

... also why is IHNMAIMS problematic enough to need references to it cut?

I'll admit that actually confuses me

[prisma sun]

It's just a bit on the nose innit

Be like if they named it GLASOS

[tulip folio]

I mean...gestures to half the alchemical charms

[velvet raft]

I suspect it's all of the above

[prisma sun]

I have read none of them so the gesture is to the Void.

[velvet raft]

Being on the nose is a classic exalted move

[tulip folio]

Well, a lot of them are 'Hey, wanna do a cool mech/kamen rider thing?' 😛

[fierce star]

white wolf has never been subtle

They know writers who use subtext and think all of them cowards

[tulip folio]

But yeah, I think if they were going to be removing 'Obvious religious references', they might need to go back to the corebook and kick out the Dragon of the Western Seas and those Ifrit. XD

[prisma sun]

Well no one brought up any issue with it being a "I AM THAT I AM" reference

[tulip folio]

In other things - If one effect converts damage to bashing and another converts it to aggravated, which has priority?

As sids have a 'turn damage aggravated' but Ifrit automatically convert all health lost to fire damage into Bashing.

So if a Sid shoots an Ifrit in the face with a flame piece, which would it be?

[prisma sun]

Isn't the sid damage just a melee attack

[tulip folio]

Sure but that's an example of a damage changing effect. There are ways to get it with any given weapon.

[bleak hazel]

I would assume that in that case, the ifrit takes bashing damage because defence comes after attack so it switches last

[fierce star]

yeah, it feels like an order of operations thing

[bleak hazel]

but if you use something like Smiling At The Damned + Kindly Sifu's Quill on the same attack, turning the damage to bashing and aggravated simultaneously you presumably get to pick

[tulip folio]

...oh, the big case it would matter - I think Ifrit can't be killed with fire weapons, even with the solar perma-kill spirits charm. XD

[prisma sun]

To me I agree but it's less because of that

and more "Specific trumps general"

A sid can turn anything aggravated, but an Ifrit can turn all fire bashing, so if the Sid tries to make Fire Aggravated, it fails

[tulip folio]

Solar: "Hahah, I can permakill spirits." Shoots with flame piece
Ifrit: "...oww?"

Then again: If you're shooting an ifrit with a flame piece, I think that one is On You.

[dense verge]

"they told me to fight fire with fire!"

[prisma sun]

should've turned the gun around so it sucks the ifrit in

foolish

[dense verge]

gkjlfdhsljk

simply hit the switch on the firewand that un-fires the fire instead of firing fire

[fierce star]

I think that wa sliterally a Golden Exhalation charm in ex2

[tulip folio]

Sid: "Yes solar, turn the gun around. I'm sure this will end well. Maybe look down the barrel to work out why it didn't go properly."

[fierce star]

oh god it's like that one scene from top gear where they gave james may a shotgun

[wise ocean]

put a switch on my firewand; flurried eight shoot actions into the opp before they hit the ground.

[bleak hazel]

Sidereals can technically make a gun do bashing damage but it requires mastery of Prismatic Arrangement plus Crane and Righteous Devil to form

[dense verge]

firewand but its just a vacuum

[prisma sun]

I can make any gun do bashing too

[fierce star]

luigi's mansion-playing ass solar

[tulip folio]

To be fair, everyone can make a gun do bashing. It's making it do bashing at range that is the tricky part

[prisma sun]

jinx

[bleak hazel]

and I have no idea why you would learn crane and righteous devil together

never have martial arts had less synergy

[fierce star]

I'm sure we can think of one

... hmm. I guess you could wield a flame piece in one hadn and a chakram in the other

... shit actually that sounds liek a cool aesthetic...

[bleak hazel]

Azure Abacus Meditation is when you throw six chakrams in the air and fire the flame piece neatly through all of the rings

[tulip folio]

Also: This seems like a really good passive for an artifact.

[bleak hazel]

I assume from the way it's written it's for an NPC?

they have a lot of banger attunement benefits

[tulip folio]

Yeah, it's for the Aversaries Ifrit

Her armour also has a really cool one.

[velvet raft]

Yeah there are

There are a bunch of ways to make that very, very good

[prisma sun]

Misc's Silly Mote Generating Sid is salivating

[bleak hazel]

Like A Dragon: Infinite Motes

a water dragon, specifically

[fierce star]

I am the mote of my pool

... Shit, I bet gets have reality marbles

[bleak hazel]

both Sids and Gets have reality marbles

it's part of BOKL

[fierce star]

I knew sids could but I honeslty forgot if it was a native charmset or an SMA thing

so that's cool

[velvet raft]

SMA is just sorta where the really crazy stuff sits

[fierce star]

I dunno man the whole maid thing is pretty crazy

[bleak hazel]

Sids also have a fairly close approximation in Thrown, if I remember the concept of a reality marble correctly

but the real masters of turning the battlefield into a representation of their inner selves are of course Infernals

[prisma sun]

I don't know what reality marbles are

[fierce star]

so they're a thing from the fate/x series of animes/games/etc, and more/less precisely from the Nasuverse as a whole (the collection of animes and such written by Kinoko Nasu and thes tudio he helped found, Type-MOON. It is the ability to project your inner world onto the world around you, replacing what is understood as reality with what is inside your own soul.

Iiii forget ifi t's magecraft or if it's one of the rare forms of actual magic still occasionally useable but that's getting into the weeds

People who have access to them can also generally use them (sometimes) to manifest powers in reality without manifesting the whoel reality marble, depending onw hat their inner world is like

ah okay it is still considered magecraft, not true magic

anyway short version is 'I reject your reality and replace it with my own' as a superpower

Sorry I get down in the weeds about nasuverse lore a lot

[bleak hazel]

this is both Gets and Infernals, but mostly not Sids, unless they learn the "weaponised solipsism" martial art

or my favourite fanmade SMA, Octarine Angles of Impossibility

which turns your physical embodiment into an extraneous puppet of your true soul, which is folded up inside a maze-dimension akin to a spirit sanctum

(using a bunch of mildly janky 2e nonsense, granted)

[prisma sun]

Oh, Domain Expansion

Sids do get a Domain Expansion then

It just doesn't really do a whole lot imo

[mighty rover]

Alchemicals get an inner world thing too iirc

[bleak hazel]

I think alchemicals just cram stuff in there rather than unfold it out into the real world

[prisma sun]

Sids at least can do Malevolent Shrine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlOhWgTb-M

E4 Drifts about to unleash some absolute bullshit

[fierce star]

yeah, Alchemicals just get an internal Elsewhere more or less

[bleak hazel]

Sids also have a convenient way to turn any martial art into a bootleg transformation sequence because you can spend 1WP to stack a Form charm activation on top of Burn Life

a little less flashy, though

[prisma sun]

That's not a domain expansion but it does rock

https://tenor.com/view/one-piece-luffy-second-gear-gif-4960565

[bleak hazel]

Burn Life of World would be a pretty cool E5 athletics charm

[velvet raft]

I should try to do that Luffy SMA I was thinking about

[bleak hazel]

I wonder if Big Burn Life suits the Rising Smoke

[fierce star]

I think the first Get I make once they have Ex3 rules might be based on Iskander from Fate/Zero

[bleak hazel]

answer: yes yes it does

[fierce star]

Ionian Heteroi is one of my favorite things

[velvet raft]

Vermillion Something of Ambition Style

Vermillion Fruit of Ambition

[fierce star]

and I feel like 'the conquering king who's armies swept across creation and unified it before his sudden tragic death' waking up on the shores of (somewhere? the blessed isle?) realizing all of that was fake coudl make for a compelling story of some variety

[bleak hazel]

from any of her target’s Intimacies that would apply if 
she were any of her inactive resplendent destinies. If 
her influence roll beats a target’s Guile, she learns what 
those Intimacies are.`` Sure, this is 2m 1wp, but hot damn, Serenities

Let me just benefit from being a Sidereal, a Dynast, a Lunar and three different utility archetypes at the same time

[coral wraith]

BlueSid good at talk

[tulip folio]

Green Lady: "Revolver Oceloting here."

[bleak hazel]

Bluesids buried the lede, this is tucked away in a corner of their Maiden charm section

Wait redsid has infinity craft charms, he can just take this

Although that would be an extra 10xp I'm not spending on his other stuff

Between craft, that charm and a splash of Presence you can be very violent and still have good social as a sid, especially on the institutional level

you can craft, roll presence and socialise with Charisma

the main downside is that Charisma is the least efficient social stat because it doesn't feed Guile and if doesn't add non-charm dice, but it suffices for basic competence

[fierce star]

... I wonder, can the craft (wife) charm work on a member of the Silver Pact

like it has to be voluntary so it's not likely without a lot of elbow grease but

[velvet raft]

You can’t really target it, can you?

[fierce star]

You can specify the group/culture/organization you're looking for a wife in

(and a PC can volutneer, so in a mixed-splat game it'd be pretty easy

or, hmm. It says you're garunteed to find a spouse within a week, actually, so you don't have to covnince them the old-fashioned way, though it does mean you have to spend a week among lunars, which is uh

not wise, for a sidereal

[velvet raft]

I guess a sid could target the Silver Pact, but I suspect the result would not necessarily net them a lunar spouse

[bleak hazel]

if you have a Lunar party member who is down, you could get the benefits for the Silver Pact, which is funny

other Serenities organisation charms explicitly work on Dynastic houses and Sidereal factions, it's not Mortals Only

[velvet raft]

Yeah, it could be used to strengthen an existing alliance

But I don't think a sid could use it with any kind of guarantee

[fierce star]

You'd have to survive a week actively courting lunars, which as said is unlikely, and the sids who could survive are unlikely to care enough about peace between heaven and the pact to do it, I feel like

you'd have to avoid being sabotaged from either side

and as noted many times in the lunar book that's just not possible

[velvet raft]

Realistically nothing stops you, the sid who is hanging out with a bunch of lunars, from getting murdered at any point before or after, yeah

looks at implicit construction methodology why hello there

[fierce star]

lol

[velvet raft]

Sid craft good

Re: tailfeathers, I imagine there’s another risk

Namely, that celestial exalts may suspect magic

If they’re elders

[bleak hazel]

the fun part about Implicit Construction Metholodogy is that an E5 sid can make 3-dots by just power slamming the excellency

so you take Forge-And-Spindle because it's Craft (Artifacts) 5 for 8xp, you take the first purchase of Craft speed accelerator for basic craft XP income, you use Fortuitious Fellowship for more gold points and you bang out a 3 dot or a couple of 2 dots manually

and then you can just print 5-dots in a month using that white XP

incredibly efficient artifact crafting for a character that also has all the diplomacy stuff in Craft (Wife), a heal charm, a few other bits

[velvet raft]

And WSAV

[bleak hazel]

actually yeah that just fits, 11 craft charms with all six in the tailfeathers tree, forge-and-spindle, excellent implementation, mending warped designs and WSAV

although I might spend two more to get Sword-Queen's Foretold Blade because come on, it's amazing

[velvet raft]

It is

[bleak hazel]

Sid Craft lets you do a very plausible Tolkein Elf-Lord impression

[velvet raft]

God, Sids are so cool

[bleak hazel]

host council of elrond, form fellowship, provide minor magical gifts, dispatch army to relieve helms deep, forge the odd spectacular wonder

(I am aware that army only exists in the films, call it Arcane Fate)

[velvet raft]

Here’s a question: assuming the ability to wave one’s hands and make it so, what kind of weird shit could make solar charm sets more distinctive and fun than just “really good at this one thing”?

My thought is playing up the blinding, overwhelming nature of the sun

Transforming one’s environment with one’s presence

[bleak hazel]

I feel that's definitely an Infernal thing more than a Solar thing

I was talking about Solar Stealth the other day and someone had a good idea for that

the existing Solar Stealth is basically "five billion uncontestable effects, you drop out of existence and the GM cannot interact with you until you stop doing that"

but if you're going for Legendary Infilitrator it should encourage you to leave calling cards and have personas with dramatic reputations and such

Larceny is actually good there, it has stuff like "say you own a thing with such confidence that your target believes it for five minutes"

Solar Stealth should be "loud" in the strategic sense, like all other solar stuff

[velvet raft]

I think you could have it be somewhat of an interlinking element across the various Solaroids

I may be drawing on Chuubo’s a little with the idea, Tbf

Where the sun is explicitly the eye of objectivity and judgment

[velvet raft]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp-L_Xei-Lg

[tulip folio]

On the topic of 'additional sid charms', an inversion of Coercion By Any Means would be pretty fun to see. As it destroys the line between physical and social power but the charm only flows one way.

Something like 'Spend (Rating+1) Control turns as if it was an intimacy of that rating to support a social action'

So that would be 3 turns for a minor, 4 turns for a major and 5 turns for a defining.

[bleak hazel]

art for the upcoming Abyssal book, apparently

I really like this one, especially compared to the just-kinda-goth signature circle

[prisma sun]

God bless our brave Roman Zulu troops in their fight against the undead

[chilly sluice]

Ooh, very nice

[fierce star]

Tha that looks familiar

[bleak hazel]

Steadily penciling in more and more martial arts dips until all my Sids are essence 7

Obsidian Shards normally doesn't grab me, but man, that flurry is something else

[wise ocean]

Congratulations on your Sid Limit tracker

[quiet garnet]

Oh hell yeah, that's my shit!

[velvet raft]

Unarmed gets so much more attractive for them once they get an SMA form charm due to the sheer combo potential from a ton of different styles.

[bleak hazel]

Especially if it's Four Magical Materials Form, yeah

but I was mostly just observing how many of the SMAs really want you to go maybe three to four charms deep

Charcoal March has medium range melee attacks, heavy cover and -3 to attack you, aerial movement and temporary grapple immunity, four in a row, that's wild

Prismatic has WoE and then the three counterspell charms, ending in Essence Redirection which is borderline Solar in its nonsense

[velvet raft]

Yeah

[bleak hazel]

Nest of Living Strands and Ways of Exaltation between them are something like +5.5 defence if you include the penalty, most of it non-charm

[prisma sun]

Charcoal March has Extreme Range melee attacks c:

https://i.imgur.com/gDySaxs.png

oh that typo

whispering to her weapon of distant lands to her weapon

I only just now realized that this is not just thrown

and that this is versatile

and thus You Can Just Punch People At Extreme Range

Drifts just got so much fucking better

[velvet raft]

Sids are wacky

[prisma sun]

This also means you are whispering

to your hands

[fierce star]

Hmm. You need a complete human soul to have an exaltation grafted onto it.

[tulip folio]

Fae: "That's not fair, I have many human souls." Belch "And I've never exalted!"

[fierce star]

lol

hmm. I guess there is liminals, though.

[mighty rover]

where would i find snake people in this setting

[prisma sun]

Serpent men of the east

Also the south

Also demon blooded of the snake demons

Or God blooded of snake gods

Or a Lunar with a snake shape

Or the kid of a Lunar with a snake shape

[tulip folio]

Or just people who wandered into the wyld for a bit

[prisma sun]

wherever anyone in Creation goes

[fierce star]

I think the Caul has a serpentfolk tribe too

[bleak escarp]

Anywhere you want them tbh

[tulip folio]

Hmm...how do you think the corebook's Animated Statues compare to Blood Apes? The statues don't have charms but they're a lot Beefier.

[bleak hazel]

Principle of Motion and a decent attack pool makes Blood Apes far superior unless you can do something to get more and more accurate attacks out of the Statues

Luckily putting them in a big, high-quality BG solves both those issues and their soak is so high that they'll be a nightmare to cut through

[tulip folio]

Yeah, I was pondering doing up a spell that lets you create some constructs much like how you can summon demons and going 'Hmm...animated statues are likely fine. Blood apes exist'. XD

[bleak hazel]

Tanky models arranged into BGs are the bane of PC existence because you can't get any init out of them, you're just standing there hacking away as they hit the whole party at once over and over and it's a very unpleasant experience

Low soak BGs are much easier to work with because you can get a +5i sizing bonus every couple of hits

[tulip folio]

Makes sense.

And is also presumably why Zambies are a liked BG.

They're very fragile on the soak front

They're infinitely brave so the entire BG won't instantly evaporate but they're also very easy to kill your way through given enough stabbing

[bleak hazel]

To take the extreme case, Size 5 might 2 elite drill walking statues have 15 dice to attack w/ double 9s, deal 23 damage and have 18 soak on top of 17 magnitude

Combat Exalts can parry them well enough but you'll be there forever, and if they have a commander they'll take chunks out of you regularly

[tulip folio]

...entertainingly, since you can have Sentient Walking Statues, you could even have ones where a commander could Rally them as they're not a fully mindless unit, just fearless. XD

[bleak hazel]

There's a second circle demon that summons Walking Statues with those exact BG stats and can command them with double 8s, I firmly believe Sigereth is scarier than Octavian

[tulip folio]

That's bloody scary.

Well, this is making me much more 'hmm...not quite so sure' about doing up a variant summon spell that can do animated stuff.

||I have been watching Bednobs and Broomsticks||

[bleak hazel]

Something like a DBT full moon tanks them forever and might hit back with enough withering damage to meaningfully reach over Overwhelming, but they're outliers

and if your whole group has 20+ soak you have other problems

[tulip folio]

Endings Sid: "My time has come!"

[bleak hazel]

Jimmy Endings is a huge value add to any party, incredible anima power

The only thing that is really still troubling my silly elder build in terms of efficient murder is that he doesn't have Lesser Sign of Saturn

(and cannot just steal it with Ways of Exaltation because that's busy pretending to be a deeb)

[tulip folio]

Clearly he just needs the power of 'Friend'

[bleak hazel]

Battles + Endings both have anima powers that share to team, so they work amazingly together

Fear the Overwhelming 8 Parry 11 daiklaive with free excellencies

[tulip folio]

...actually, thinking about it, the big scene of Bednobs and Broomsticks is likely a really good visualization of War Ghosts.

[tulip folio]

Terrestrial Sorcery

Substitutiary Locomotion
Cost: Ritual, 2wp
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Over the course of several hours, the sorcerer brings life to a creature of stone or porcelain. With the rising of the sun, the sorcerer's creation rises in turn to serve.

Before an automaton can be given life, it must be created. Doing so is a Major Project, using an appropriate Craft skill (Such Dollmaking or Stonecarving), at a difficulty of 4 for a child-sized doll, 5 for human-sized articulated dolls or 6 for a statue large and fine enough to be an Animated Statue. Automatons beyond the scale of an Animated Statue are too large to be animated by this spell.

The automaton has an statline appropriate for its shape, such as a Marionette (Ikinote: Will put those marionette rules I made here) or Animated Statue. The binding links to their master give it a Defining Tie of loyalty to her that cannot be weakened or altered by any means and setting its Resolve to 0 against any influence rolls she makes. 

Went with 'You need to make the damn body' as the counterpart to Demon's 'Look, bind them' extra hoop to jump through.

Safer but it's a lot slower to mass produce

[bleak escarp]

Generally speaking I think if you're comparing something to blood apes either it's a weaker combatant or there's an error somewhere. Like, don't compare Ahlat to Blood Apes, but also if you think something comparably easy to summon to a blood ape is a better combatant, either you're wrong, it's balanced by other hassles, or possibly bad writing.

Blood Apes are genuinely meant to be the best thing to summon when looking for summonable elite combatants.

Example, look at teodozjia.

Teodozjia are better fighters than blood apes! They even get special bennies on top! Wow!

Teodozjia are a pain that most summoners avoid, because those special bennies are a trap.

[tulip folio]

Sure but I was looking things over to make sure they were not better than Blood Apes as general combatants. XD

[bleak escarp]

Fair, fair

The books are usually well written enough that I would assume answers 1 or 2 though.

(I would not assume the same for Essence)

[prisma sun]

I would imagine the downside of an automata is that it's incredibly easy to trick and has no initiative on it's own

[bleak escarp]

Lack of charms is also kind of a big deal.

[tulip folio]

The big limitation was intended to be 'It's always material'

[bleak escarp]

As Misc said, the statues might be beefier but... the blood ape has Principle of Motion.

[tulip folio]

You can have a group of blood apes just sitting around you invisibly, ready to fight at a moment's notice.

While with a statue, if it's here it's always here

And you can't really go some places with your big statue friend

That and the 'you need to build them, using major projects'.

[bleak escarp]

For reference; Teodozjia are Yozi priests, so they'll go around despoiling the temples of other gods and try to foment Yozi worship in their place. This generates a lot of unrest and ill feeling in your environs, it's a ready-made PR campaign for anybody who wants casus belli against you, and it makes you easy to find to act on that casus belli. They also have a hive mind, where every Teodozjia sees and hears what every other Teodozjia sees and hears. And you aren't the only person who can summon Teodozjia; every one of them is a walking security breach for anything you do in front of them.

[tulip folio]

And yeah, I've done up some stats for the Marionettes as more Human Scale Combatant/Servants. Not as good a direct fighter as an animated statue but they're more 'Hey, I want a servant that can also fight if needed'.

Much, much less durable and lower base damage but a bit more accurate/parrying and 8 dice on domestic work so they can wander about your sorcerer's home making food and serving drinks.

[bleak hazel]

I love teodozjia, they're some of my favourite Malfean lad (singular)

Psycho Ranger celestial lions

[prisma sun]

Which one are Teodozjia again

[bleak hazel]

jade lion statues that love the yozis and will go full iconoclast whenever you summon them

they're a hive-mind, so if you stop them doing this then they will be miffed at you collectively if and when you summon more of them

[bleak hazel]

the statues having such nuts soak and better raw damage actually does mean that I would prefer them if I wanted adds for fighting other combat exalts or especially choppy entities like third circles, with the blood apes better against basically anything lower grade than that because they swing twice with better accuracy

perfect morale + huge soak + lots of health levels + battlegroup means that statues basically can't be used as init sponges, which can be a problem with other terrestrial-circle or equivalent summons when placed against opponents they can't damage reliably

I actually quite like that narratively, all your minions get in the way and give the enemy breathing room

(also stacking tons of soak on every NPC and PC makes the game slightly grindy and should generally be avoided, but that's usually more an issue the other way around)

[upper stratus]

go my OVH 15

[bleak hazel]

fixing this slight jank in the base combat engine by exalting another 2000 endings sids to stand around whenever there's a fight and cheer on both sides

[upper stratus]

maybe saturn just does it herself from all the way downtown cause she wants them to get on with this shit already

[tulip folio]

Does any book give example Difficulties for Major Craft Projects? The Difficulties here were just off the top of my head.

[prisma sun]

Saturn got so fucking mad at Rakan Thulio parrying hher that she said go my scarabs

[bleak hazel]

Crucible has Diff 1-4, but it also has a completely different craft system so there you go

Death In Effigy, a necromancy shaping ritual, has a basic project at 2 and a major project at 4, so 4 seems standard

[upper stratus]

i think the need to spend silver xp is gonna be the obstacle here rather than whether it's difficulty 4 or 5

[bleak hazel]

yeah, the difficulties on non-artifact craft projects are not particularly difficult for any exalt

I appreciate anything that provides more directly useful basic and major projects, though

[upper stratus]

yeag

cause it's a nice way to get some gold xp going

[velvet raft]

It’s just funny that the best way for many exalts to accumulate craft XP is to open a branch of John Crafter’s Swords and Chairs

[bleak hazel]

my Abyssal is hoping to open up a stereotypical Cultivation Auction House and trade craft projects for favours owed, both as a thematic thing and to get some god damn XP

[fierce star]

The GM for the alchemicals game I'll be joining is seriously considering just giving me a trickle of silver and gold craft XP from downtime based on what I could expect on average during that time frame on top of whatever I actually spend time crafting, with the excuse of 'you live in a metropolis, it's a municple charm, don't think too hard about it'

[velvet raft]

Something that’s fun is that Sids get a constant silver trickle with Proper Plumage

Every day you use it, you get some

[bleak hazel]

also Fortuitous Fellowship

if you're going for the "no power charms, please, I'm too pretty to need a hammer" approach and just buying one or two actual crafting charms + the capstone, this is very handy because you need to make one 3-dot with Raw Excellency for each 5-dot you print off the E5 daikaive printer

costing you about 53-63 gold XP depending on how hot your dice are

[prisma sun]

Man I am still on the idea that Sids can do martial arts from extreme range

you get kicked by a guy from the horizon

[chilly sluice]

reading up on the Deeb houses again
I really wanna play an Iselsi now

[fierce star]

Sometimes I feel like a hipster for my favorite great house 'cause no one else seems to like them as much as I do, lol

[chilly sluice]

what is it?

[fierce star]

Nellens

[velvet raft]

It's been a while since I was up on my great houses but

[chilly sluice]

Nellens does seem neat too

[velvet raft]

I recall having a yen for V'neef

[wise ocean]

I am God's strongest Iselsi supporter

[upper stratus]

my sid's a nellens. auntie got the exalted niece she always wanted. just not hte way she expected

[velvet raft]

I just find something charming about "tiny house run by the first person the Scarlet Empress might have actually been grooming to be her heir, except now the Empress is gone and she and her house are adrift as absolutely everyone stares at them with malice"

[chilly sluice]

the Empress being gone did kinda fuck over everything for the Dynasts it seems

[fierce star]

I'm a sucker for an underdog, and the house known for not being exalted is the biggest underdog of the great houses. And their house symbol will always amuse me.

[velvet raft]

Also, speaking of deebs: Sextes Jylis is the worst name

[fierce star]

I mean I'm sure we can think of more worst ones

it is upt here though

[velvet raft]

Of the five, I mean

[fierce star]

lol

[velvet raft]

Mela, Hesiesh, Daana'd, Pasiap and ... Sextes Jylis?

y

y not just jylis or something

Those first four are pretty good

[prisma sun]

None of the houses REALLY appeal to me as like

a player

Peleps is kinda fun but I'd rather be a servant of a house than a member

[bleak hazel]

I always like the outcastes

"outcaste fallen in with a bunch of dynasts" is fun even if everyone does get sneering rights at you

[valid summit]

I have a fondness for Sesus but that's probably just because they were the house I picked for my first DB PC

[upper stratus]

love house ledaal. love me a good demon hunters

[dense verge]

nellens and v'neef i like

though i do lean non-dynast when thinking of dragonbloods to play

[velvet raft]

I'm not huge on dynasts in general

But of the dynast houses, V'neef and Nellens stand out to me

[valid summit]

I love 'em
just so many fun, juicy contradictions to play around with

[quiet garnet]

I kinda like House V'neef, out of all the great houses

[prisma sun]

Korit's a Dynast just not one from a House.

[dense verge]

i made mori a dynast when i translated her over to exalted. gives her a flourish that her lancer version doesnt have. she's still an endings sidereal.

[prisma sun]

Korit being Berit's son is a fun bit that makes me feel like I'm intruding on Mary Sue territory but I have to remember that it literally does not matter with Exalted

[dense verge]

look i can only use mori in like, very specific games because half the conceit is that she may or may not be a daughter of the empress everyone fucking forgot because she exalted as a sidereal. that or somehow related to v'neef or mnemon since there's only so many redheads from the blessed isle

so exalted lets me cut loose a little with the whole "am i making this character too Big of a thing" sometimes

[fierce star]

I mean hell one of my pocket PC picks is a literal clone of her redness

[velvet raft]

Clone of her redness shows up, exalts as a sid

[fierce star]

Abyssal in this case, but the concept can work for pretty much any exalt (though less so for DB surprisingly)

[velvet raft]

Sid would be fun because the sids would be in a position to take advantage of that but would cause all sorts of problems for themselves in so doing

[fierce star]

legit

[velvet raft]

"Our control of the Scarlet Empress has never been very good" has always been a problem for the Bureau of Destiny

However this is not actually a good solution

[fierce star]

Yeah my specific setup was 'house mnemon made a clone of Mommy Red with an intent to do a kill and replace if necessary because Mnemon is Ambition, but then Her Redness vanished and they had a perfect chance to just do a replace if THE CLONE WOULD JUST EXALT ALREADY'

[velvet raft]

Some of the problem is also that the Empress was frighteningly capable and shrewd enough that trying to do her stuff in the absence of her trademark inscrutable political brilliance would rapidly cause problems.

[fierce star]

Yeah, my thought for this excuse was 'Mnemon has a voice in the character's ear' was the plan, since like. 100% Mnemon thinks she could do it.

of course then the character exalts as anything other than a DB and every plan goes to hell

[velvet raft]

Yeeeeah … Mnemon’s problem is that while she is highly capable, she’s still not as capable as she thinks.

[bleak hazel]

To be fair, while that plan is silly for other reasons I don't think "whoops, one of the 700-ish celestial exaltations happened to stick to this person in particular" is something you can reasonably plan for

Talk about long odds

[velvet raft]

Nah, what I mean is: even if that didn’t happen, and the clone exalted properly as a deeb and everything, this is a plan that would never work

Mnemon is competent enough to make a clone and put her on the throne, but I feel absolutely certain things would rapidly disintegrate from there

For the same reason the Empress ultimately never favored Mnemon: she’s skilled, but she’s not that skilled

Kind of a tragic figure, really

[fierce star]

Yeah

and it absolutely is a silly idea, but exalted being exalted

it's not an impossible idea

[velvet raft]

If literally any other person had been her mother, Mnemon could probably have been happy

A cloned empress narrative could really lean into that, and how so much of Mnemon’s behavior is just replicating the ways the Empress treated her

[fierce star]

yeah

[velvet raft]

And specifically have Mnemon acting that out on the clone

[bleak hazel]

I admit I prefer 3e Mnemon, who is a lot less monomaniacal about her mummy issues

this seems like the kind of thing that one of her lieutenants would come up with in a classic case of "well, it's my best idea because it's my only idea" rather than the serious best effort of a centuries-old matriarch and politician

[fierce star]

In my general idea, mnemon was involved but in more of a 'checking in every few months' and 'signed off on the project' way than 'personally in charge', though could be written as being personally in charge

basically smart enough to be able to disown the whole thing if it came to light, you know?

[velvet raft]

I think that under those circumstances, if the Scarlet Empress disappears and you have a chance to put said clone on the throne, you have to do it

Or write the whole thing off forever

It’s an enormous gamble, even a foolish one

[prisma sun]

I think you have to weigh "What if she comes back"

[tulip folio]

What if she comes back? And she's got a demon boyfriend? And she's killed all the Sidereals? All important things to consider

[prisma sun]

I do not think we have to consider this

[dense verge]

empress coming back? just find her first so she doesn't! (i do not think mnemon would send assassins for that but is fun extrapolation)

[fierce star]

I'm not sure mnemon wouldn't either

[velvet raft]

But I think Mnemon could plausibly decide this is her first and last chance

And then have things spiral out of control

[next delta]

To be fair, the Empress is exceptionally competent even by the standards of exalted competence. There is maybe a handful of other characters in universe that compare?

Her plan to be load bearing to the realm was great until she disappeared lol

[dense verge]

i feel the empress' plan was that the realm after she was gone was not her problem

[next delta]

Yes, though I kind of expect she wasn't expecting to ever leave

[velvet raft]

Definitely, she’s portrayed as an anomaly by any reasonable metric. But it was part of her being a spectacularly awful parent.

The ol’ “intelligence means you’ll be very skilled at doing the wrong thing”

[prisma sun]

Authoritarian Hyper-competency except to your dozen+ color-coded evil children

the TTRPG staple

[raw owl]

Wrt depictions of the Empress and her daughters, I will once again strenuously urge those present to read The Last Daughter and its sequel, A Vision In Bronze, on Sufficient Velocity if you havent already

Just really high-quality Exalted fiction that dives deep into the nuances of the Realm both as a culture, a political machine, and an interplay of personalities

[velvet raft]

Part of what I think is so interesting about V’neef is that it does seem like the empress might actually have had plans for her

And I’m struck by the notion of like … what if she actually played the part of a good mom to V’neef, and her other kids kinda hate V’neef’s guts for it?

[prisma sun]

That's sorta explicit

Everyone fucking hates V'neef for it

[raw owl]

It would take less than that for me to hate V'neef's guts if I was her sister, I tell you what

[prisma sun]

Well part of it is that in playing the good mom, Big Red fucked over like half of her siblings

https://i.imgur.com/2hodPW0.png

Berit put in double the effort and V'neef got what she always wanted

Peleps was cut in half

[raw owl]

Not that she's done anything to deserve it of course. But my seethe levels would be off the charts

[dense verge]

V'neef I picture as being the next kind of counterweight to the other houses in order to keep them from being too stable and secure in their positions. Only problem is that mid-way through her house being built up by taking pieces from the other, established, houses, the Empress vanished. So now V'neef is in a very vulnerable position where her main source of security has vanished, and she has a lot of angry siblings wanting their slice of the pie back

[velvet raft]

To be clear, I don't just mean resentment over her being the political favorite and having stuff handed to her

I mean resentment over being the only one who the Empress ever seemed to actually like

[dense verge]

that too

[velvet raft]

Every other kid sitting there at the lunch table saying, "wow, mom was the worst, she never showed us any love or affection, it was always 'do this' or 'as expected' that"

V'neef: "wait really she was always so nice to me" (she is not foolish enough to actually say this out loud, this is a comical interlude)

universal stares of hatred

[prisma sun]

Is there a bit about like

Dynasts outside of the Houses?

[dense verge]

iiiii vaguely remember something about cadet houses

[prisma sun]

Yeah but I don't think that counts

trying to figure out what Korit counts as

since he's a Grandson of the Empress but not a member of a House

[velvet raft]

Magistrate

[raw owl]

He's about as literal a Dynast as one can get

being directly related to the Empress

[velvet raft]

Magistrates come from houses in most cases, but they have worked with the direct approval of the Empress

[prisma sun]

Magistrate is like, a position though

Like a job

[bleak hazel]

yeah, the Big Red chapter fiction has her considering her latest lover for a magistrate's position

[velvet raft]

It's pretty much the one place in the realm bureaucracy where you don't have to belong to a house

[prisma sun]

Also is it a retcon that Big Red's first husband was trans?

or was that always a thing

this is just an aside

and not related to the previous question

[raw owl]

it's new information, idk that it's a retcon

[bleak hazel]

I really like the deeb book's chapter fiction, because it (sensibly) starts 60 years or so before the Empress' disappearance and as such has time for even deebs to go through a significant span of years and show off the typical Sworn Hearth dynamic

more Exalted campaigns should be willing to stretch over a decade or more

[fierce star]

Misc 'I want more downtime to do craft shenanigans, let's play generational games' McMiscermisc

(I agree wholeheartedly)

[velvet raft]

If Scarlet goes and says, "I'm stripping you of your house rank and inducting you as a magistrate, you answer to me and only me now"

No one can stop her

That's just a thing she can do

[bleak hazel]

that's not generational, that's just the time that pre-modern national dynamics take when the plot isn't "solars walk into the imperial manse, drop a protoshinmaic vortex and perfect dab the explosion" like it was in 2e

[prisma sun]

I cannot get over the sub-chapter about the Power of Deeb Nut

[bleak hazel]

especially now that the Thousand Dooms are gone - if you run the Realm Civil War as something more like the Crisis of the Third Century it can reasonably go for many decades without the world ending ten times

and even end in "a changed Realm stabilises" if you prefer

[velvet raft]

The houses counterbalance each other politically, so either you work for them or your work for her

[fierce star]

well, yes, but there is an entire like, half chapter in... I think crucible about generational games and i thought it'd be neat to throw it out there

as lkike, a campaign type with huge amounts of built in downtime

*like

[bleak hazel]

assuming you take the narrative power of Solaroids as something more like what it is meant to be rather than what the mechanics indicate ("a chargen Dawn can casually walk up to Ahlat or Ma-Ha-Suchi and kick him around, no real uncertainty") I can totally see things being in roughly the same stalemate as they are currently in, say, another four to five years

the Caul probably falls, maybe there is another war around Thorns, but it isn't inevitable that the entire political landscape of the Realm instantly gets power dunked one way or the other a few weeks after the campaign starts

[mighty rover]

oh huh where's that

[prisma sun]

https://i.imgur.com/mY7YlYb.png

Diversity win! The Father Of A Thousand Tyrants was trans!

Also yeah, Solars should be able to knock over a minor country after a bit

but something like Harborhead has been dealing with Exalts for a thousand years

[valid summit]

"I have spent seven hundred years listening to every motherfucker in Creation with an anima banner whine about how they could do my job better than me, and now I'm supposed to give a shit about how it turns out that's hard? Eat me."

[prisma sun]

Also do you think "Empress" is meant to be gender-neutral

like I think it says Ragara or Cathak would be crowned Empress

and not Emperor

[chilly sluice]

I'd assume so

[valid summit]

No, I think it's a detail of the Realm's gender dynamics.

[prisma sun]

is this gender-neutral or force-femming

[chilly sluice]

Yeah that's what I meant

[valid summit]

ah, yeah fair
I'm saying it's "gender neural" in that a man taking Big Red's seat would be Empress rather than Emperor
but the term is still feminine, the same way it's "the Matriarchs" even if they're men
analogous to how a woman who took power might reign as King, because "Queen" isn't the female equivalent of "King" it's a distinct and significantly lesser position because the male and female roles aren't seen as equal

[velvet raft]

I think this is part of a change away from 2e's take of No One Minds If Your Dynast Is Gay But You Must Get Het Married And Have Het Babies For The Realm

[wise ocean]

same deal with the Holy Roman ruler who explicitly said "call me Emperor because I am"

[prisma sun]

Well they kinda still have that

[velvet raft]

There are a lot of ways around that at this point

[prisma sun]

but they're also like "But if you make a baby, then whatever"

yeah

[velvet raft]

"Just summon a neomah"

[prisma sun]

But you're still expected to find a malewife

[bleak hazel]

Cathak Cainan, despite being, and I quote "Him. He rules from a throne in Himbuktu and is a Dragon-Blooded GOAT contender." is still a House Matriarch, because that's just how that terminology works

[velvet raft]

Whereas in 2e, there were no ways around it

[bleak hazel]

Cainan would have been a shoe-in for Empress if he was not so old that all it would do is delay the succession crisis for a decade or two

[prisma sun]

Were you the one that had a game where they gave Cainan a peach of immortality

or did I read that somewhere else

[velvet raft]

The one sibling who is sufficiently well-liked

[bleak hazel]

no, but that's been a classic plot for Sids especially for a while

I think if you do want to do a Slow Realm Civil War for a longer game, there are worse ways to do that than to say "Cainan elected as a collective can-kicking maneuver, everyone gets their shit together and waits for him to die"

it's plausible

[chilly sluice]

I forget is it even publicly known that the Empress is gone?

[prisma sun]

I think so

They have a Reagant now

[bleak hazel]

Fokuf is de-jure Regent, so yes

[valid summit]

yeah
compared to a lot of Creation's societies the Realm is fairly egalitarian in terms of gender, especially compared to the massive class disparities, but it does have a fairly subtle but consistent bias toward women

[prisma sun]

They really named this guy Fuck Off

[wise ocean]

Fokuf, we have a Regent

[valid summit]

they did!
Exalted has a good few of those kinds of jokes going around

[bleak hazel]

to be fair, Cainan is not exactly looked down upon for his gender given his position, he is extremely well respected

[fierce star]

Is it still implied in 3e that he's either exactly as incompetenta s he seems or he's actually the head of the all seeing eye and there is no in between

fokuf, that is

not cainan, cainan doesn't seem incompetent by any read

[valid summit]

like how the Immaculate Order is overseen by the Mouthpiece (as in, the Siderials')

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah, two of the iconic Sidereals from previous eds are "Black Ice Shadow", who is very goth, and "Crimson Banner Executioner" who cuts red tape

[prisma sun]

what if he's the head of the Eye but he's ALSO just jacking off

[bleak hazel]

also Shepherd of the North Star, who is either doing an amazing job or is very lazy, because the north star certainly has not gone anywhere since he took the job

[velvet raft]

The trouble is that a lot of houses do not want to give other houses time to get their shit together

The Realm having a civil war would be an extremely stupid way for it to fail

Everybody knows that

But it could absolutely happen, at lightning speed, simply because everybody is trying to outplay everybody else before everybody else outplays them

Nobody wants to give Tepet time to reconstitute its legions under a brilliant young general, for instance

[bleak hazel]

sure, which is why the suggested timeline is a faster war, because it gives Solar/Lunar/Etc. parties free rein to go wild and knock over what countries they want to without being hit by the Orbital Dragon Shock Troopers

but "everyone is being more cautious, given current events" is a reasonable shift that doesn't require ripping up too many important setting planks

[prisma sun]

Unfortunately no one in the forum is doing Dynast stuff

[velvet raft]

I just don't find kicking the can down the road especially plausible from a realpolitik perspective.

[valid summit]

Yeah, like I said it is fairly gender-neutral, it's not like you get Dynastic influencers complaining that men shouldn't be in politics because their place is shirtless and doing manual labor
just, like, if you have two promising young Dynastic officers of opposite gender up for one promotion the man might have to worry that his supervisors default to assuming a woman is more capable of leadership
and the feminine terms for positions of power because the cultural assumption is feminine
"subtle but consistent" sort of thing

[prisma sun]

since the sheer gravitational weight of the Scavenger Lands has claimed everyone

[bleak hazel]

I do, pre-modern wars take a hot minute

[dense verge]

realm civil war has a few outlines of branching paths in the realm or deeb companion book iirc

[prisma sun]

They do

[bleak hazel]

it's in Heirs, yes

[dense verge]

honestly as far as dynast things go i'd've dropped mori in there if i thought her deal would fit

[prisma sun]

Also realizing that I can't really have Korit be an independent Legionaire

he'd have to be under a house or dragging his feet to assignment

[dense verge]

oh yeah the legions got suborned to the various houses

except for the ones that just kind of didnt show up

[valid summit]

incidentally, I've really come to like one of my own theories about the disappearance of the Empress
which is that one day she was plotting out the downfall of a potentially destabilizing notable in the Dynasty and she suddenly realized that she didn't fucking care anymore

[fierce star]

'fuck it, larceny charms, I'm gonna retire with a new identity'

[spring lynx]

i wonder if the sidereals ever use heaven's dragons to spy on the realm

[valid summit]

I mean, yeah.
You don't get to be the former mistress of the world. Everyone would have a vested interest in forcing her back, making sure she stays gone, or settling several centuries' worth of scores
so she disappears with three or four fortunes beyond the dreams of avarice she's stashed away to live it up on some Western island paradise, she's sipping fruity cocktails while Creation manages without her or dies in a fire and either way it's no longer her fucking problem

[bleak hazel]

you could go even more samurai movie here and produce the Unusually OP Outcaste Swordswoman

which would be implausible but very funny

then again I suppose before she ruled the world she was a junior officer

[prisma sun]

hrmghhhhhhh

Need to figure out how Korit works now

does he get kept on for his Legion due to not having any external loyalties (besides to his mother, which is a relative non-issue)

[spring lynx]

heh. relative.

[prisma sun]

ha

[valid summit]

so, it's been a minute since I read up on this, but I think the deal was that the Houses have suborned the Legions in that they've taken over funding them directly instead of the Realm doing so from the treasury
so if there's no clearly conflicted loyalty between the new paymasters and a capable officer they might figure that leaving him is safer than trying to purge him

[prisma sun]

I'm unsure if he'd be a General at this point though

or if that's too Big

[valid summit]

well, it's Big, but that means that trying to replace him would also be Big
given the circumstances in the Realm, potentially "we're not actually sure which way his army would go on this" big

[prisma sun]

Korit I run as being rather popular with his soldiers, enough that they'd beat the shit out of anyone calling him "The Half-Dragon"

He's a very "lead from the front tactical genius" type of guy

Hrmmmmm

So I think the main two things I'd do are either:
Korit had his post revoked, yet remains an Inspector General or Military Magistrate, still a member of the Legions but with a focus on the larger Military, keeping a cadre of his most loyal troops as a "bodyguard" despite it being several hundred soldiers.

or

Korit was purposefully assigned to the V'neef's second Legion as a way to ensure tensions, with Berit taking it as a personal insult by her siblings AND V'neef.

He's probably got a mixed popularity with the Order

due to the one hand of Upholding Immaculate ideals and being rather pious for a Legionaire
and on the other wielding what is definitely a demon sword

[prisma sun]

Kinda like the idea of him being booted upstairs

and being pissed about it

Oh, he could also be on a Wyld Hunt instead

That actually solves a lot of that doesn't it

"You're being reassigned to the Wyld Hunt, we will quietly take your troops back to the Blessed Isle don't you worry"

Korit:

https://tenor.com/view/cat-with-fire-reflected-on-the-glass-on-his-head-gif-6450860921322291023

[valid summit]

heh, I dig that one

[spring lynx]

they did also basically gut the officers' corps to replace them with people more loyal to the houses than the throne, ftr

[prisma sun]

Yeah

I think Korit was too prestigious to just fire

so they've put him in the Wyld Hunt

[spring lynx]

yeah i can see it being "we don't want him in command of the legion, but if we kill him, we'll definitely lose it in mutiny, so let's just send him off somewhere that'll probably end up killing him for us"

"if it kills him, we give him full honours and pretend it's a tragedy to us. if it doesn't, he's still making himself useful. away from here. far, far away from here."

[prisma sun]

Ye

I like this set up

[valid summit]

My first DB's deal was being the daughter of a dead Sesus general war hero, who'd just graduated from the House of Bells with a command that she didn't really deserve on merit (capable warrior, middling commander)
so on one hand she's got the whole "overwhelming pressure of societal expectation" character drama but on the other hand girl your problem is that you've gotten too much unearned authority and prestige along with the cosmic power and wealth

[prisma sun]

Korit's whole vibe is that he's the plucky adventurer protagonist after character development (bad)

Lost his Hearth in the back-to-back catastrophes that were finding the demon sword, and then defending it from the Infernal who really wanted it.

[valid summit]

nice

[valid summit]

Kaeo's thing was, basically, that she was both a burdened underdog trying to live up to the pressures of her expectation and also a spoiled rich kid imbued with divine power and institutional privilege
a brave and loyal can-do optimist looking to take on the world and prove herself as an agent of brutal empire

I rolled her up for a PbP game which fell apart immediately (as they are wont to do) and I was setting up this thing where I'd do cutaways to the perspective of some of her Legionnaires

a Greek chorus sort of thing giving the on the ground perspective of the supernatural melodrama looks like from the outside

[prisma sun]

Rosen and Kranz

[tulip folio]

Hmm...tinkering more with that spell for making automatons. How do you think this compares to the corebook Walking Statue as a mook? It's got better parry and accuracy but much worse damage and soak and health levels.

I think it's overall worse. If the statue goes Unarmed it's 10 dice at damage 14 and it can get Double 9s on any Decisive Attack, while the Blademaster's +1 success is a very specific situation. The big bonus is base parry 5 instead of base parry 4 though also 5 less soak and no hardness.

[fierce star]

Could maybe throw a little hardness on there as a treat if you're worried?

[prisma sun]

What would be a good charm list for a brawl focused fire aspect

[velvet raft]

It's a bit rough, since there's not a lot of fire brawl charms

The first few are balanced, at least

But a lot of the brawl charms benefit very much from matching aura

[velvet raft]

Speaking of which, Embracing the Violent Flow seems pretty wild

Very cool combined with Water Dragon

[tulip folio]

Yeah, gave them some Basic Hardness. Not a lot but enough to soak up some minor damage

[bleak hazel]

previewed charm from Sid companion, one of the criminal styles lets you Shabiri Grape people

[tulip folio]

...I'm guesing that terrestial means 'it can't be used more than once a scene'. XD

Rather than 'you can use this charm once, ever'

As the 1/scene is in the reset section

[prisma sun]

Doing this multiple times in a scene would make it go from intimidating to hilarious

[tulip folio]

Just collecting your bag worth of eyes.

If you're a Dawn you can get both eyes from the same guy.

With their 1/scene auto-reset

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/nom-nom-chew-grapes-hungry-feed-me-gif-14611678

[velvet raft]

Procrastinating by thinking about a Luffy SMA

Vermillion Drumbeat of Freedom style

Or something

[tulip folio]

I could see the form having as a minor bonus 'Bashing damage can't fill your incapacitated box'

You're too rubbery to be knocked out unless they actually put holes in you

[velvet raft]

The idea here is to work from the textual and metatextual elements of Gear 5 and Luffy's overall character

So like complementary abilities would be Athletics and also Integrity

Something something unshackled by the limits of anatomy and eventually physical law altogether

[velvet raft]

First thoughts

Gum Body Atemi
3m, 1i
Supplemental
Uniform, Enlightenment
Instant
The martial artist's body stretches and bends outlandishly as they attack, unshackled by the limits of their own anatomy.
Make an attack out to medium distance. It becomes reaching, grappling, disarming, and flexible. Used at short distance, their unarmed attack also has the stats of both a medium and a light weapon. At close distance, it also has the stats of a heavy weapon.
Enlightenment: Gum Body Atemi is reflexive and and has a duration of one round.

[velvet raft]

I should probably change it to dual and add an effect other than range for decisive attacks

[velvet raft]

(This is almost certainly too anemic)

[bleak hazel]

compare to Rain of Unseen Threads, yeah

5m scenelong medium range attacks, plus other stuff, plus most of the tags you've provided there

[bleak hazel]

Agents of Heaven (the Sidereals companion) is done with editing, according to the onyx path news

I think that means art and layout time from my limited knowledge of TTRPG publishing

[velvet raft]

Typically, yeah

Different houses have different production processes

Does that mean there will be a manuscript around in the near future?

[next delta]

I think they don't release non-main books early until after art + layout?

[velvet raft]

Gotcha

[bleak hazel]

we also apparently have a list of the sids in said companion

looking forward to green lady stats

[merry arch]

fucking finallyyyyy

[coral wraith]

slapchop carjack stats... it's time

[bleak hazel]

apparently a) he's E8 and b) Anys is still slightly fightier than he is

this is unsurprising, he's the great schemer

I'm also looking forward to Red-Handed Kilamanjaro

she's apparently a total gold faction zealot and also has a literal giant demon arm she ripped off a demon and stuck on her shoulder after it removed hers

Yarrick style

[coral wraith]

Based department just called

They want her in every game

[bleak hazel]

the sid elders are at least statted to give a non-optimised but not pathetic PC party an actual fight

because they hadn't figured out combo charms by the time they published them the Lunar elders aren't

I am pretty sure "Anys Syn can kill Lilith with one counterattack" is not meant to be fiction-accurate but it is good for adding to the list of Anys Syn Facts

[dense verge]

this is at least 20% of all sids

assuming these sids dont also know other sids

[bleak hazel]

we have stats for 24 sids plus the nameless one in the corebook

[dense verge]

who do not get stat blocks

critical supply shortage of sid

and dont forget rakan

[velvet raft]

All sids know each other >_>

[dense verge]

i mean as far as naming other sids in intimacies

[prisma sun]

Going through my intimacy list and putting one for every single other Sid

[fierce star]

Minor, distaste, the asshole with the corner office...

[mighty rover]

watchin' Hero, at least partially because the deeb book recommended it

[velvet raft]

It's very intense

[prisma sun]

I'd also suggest Red Cliff

[upper stratus]

ayesha ura statblock...

[tulip folio]

I still really wish we go some more sid charms in the book.

[bleak hazel]

goofy move of the day: Sids can use their Archery tree with any SMA, so you can murder people with pattern spider touch stuck on the end of an arrow

giving you a hawkeye number of trick arrows because you can shoot someone with poison, weapon-destroying vortex, duck form, new identity, hedgehog, boulder....

[prisma sun]

Plucks a blade of grass and fires it out of my harp, turning you into your own father

which I retroactively have made the god of dung

[velvet raft]

Citrine Arrowheads of Contagion

[tulip folio]

Pondering what sort of constructs would be thematic to have a mage make in Exalted.

[velvet raft]

hm cat ears ...

[tulip folio]

Still pondering this. I've got Animated Statues and Puppets so far.

[fierce star]

There's the brass soldiers? That sort of like, clockwork automaton stuff is probably mroe craft than pure sorcery, I suppose, but the line does blur

[tulip folio]

Clockwork could be fun.

[chilly sluice]

Can you apply poison to unarmed attacks?
Or am I gonna have to rely on charm based poisons and/or carry some hand needles?

[prisma sun]

Depends on the poison I'd say

[fierce star]

So technically I think you can only poison weapons with the Poisonable tag, but that tag only appears on throwing weapons

the game is kind of

not very clear on this

[chilly sluice]

Ah, great

I am planning to commit unwise amounts of Martial Arts shenanigans, so I was curious about my options