Exalted

[chilly sluice]

(White Veil, Black Claw, some Water Dragon to cheat Terrestrial, and maybe some Ebon Shadow if I really want to spread myself far too thin)

[fierce star]

basically the existance of hte poisonable tag implies that a weapon without it cannot be poisoned

but there's no other actual rules for what can and can't be poisoned

I personally would allow unarmed weapons to be poisoned with proper stunting--smearing it uunder your fingernails or suchlike

well, unarmed attacks

[chilly sluice]

That seems reasonable to me

[bleak hazel]

Today in "extensive Exalted theorycrafting on the train" - I realise Sid Melee gives one of the only vaguely reliable ways to reflexively enter crane form

Crane Form's reflexive activation condition is "defend against an attack that causes the attacker's initiative to fall below your own", which is very fiddly because missing a withering costs nothing and missing a decisive only costs 2-3i

but Sid Melee has Serenity in Blood, which raises the target number of an enemy attack by 1-2 and costs them 1 init for every die that fails because of the increase

so if they attack you while on similar init you can pop it and potentially get Crane Form off a withering

at least I think this works, you have to parry with Melee but I don't think reflexive activation cares about what you used to parry

It helps that Serenity In Blood is also pretty incredible on its own merits and has an extremely cool name

[graceful geode]

So what does Crane From do?

[bleak hazel]

While full defending or Defending Other, you can make a reflexive withering or decisive counterattack against any attack against you or your ward respectively

[graceful geode]

Oooooooh

I can see why that's hard to trigger

[bleak hazel]

incredibly strong once established but has a fairly mean warmup time because normally you can't full defend and attack on the same turn and the form takes a second turn to set up

Melee Sids can also flurry full defences and martial arts attacks as long as they are using a shield in the off-hand, so you have amazing tempo

the natural loadout choice there is a wushu hook-sword for Crane Style's disarming counters plus a buckler, which is kind of neat, I don't think I've seen that anywhere except maybe on the Prasadi dragonbloods in the deeb book

[upper stratus]

sidereal dodge also does this

[bleak hazel]

So it does, I hadn't noticed

although only on the 1wp mode

[upper stratus]

yes

im not sure why tbh

[bleak hazel]

They're symmetrical, except the dodge one has a slightly cooler repurchase since you steal init rather than just forcing your opponent to lose it

which I suppose is justified because Parry has the +1 medium bonus that dodge gets around with cooler charms

[velvet raft]

Lots of martial arts also give +1 Evasion

[tulip folio]

True but I don't think many give a non-charm evasion bonus.

That reminds me, I was going to update one of the old 2e martial arts I liked.

[velvet raft]

A few give +1 defense more generally, I don't think any give parry

Snake is awesome because it penalizes attackers

[bleak hazel]

Stacking a whole bunch of hit penalties is a good way to produce fairly demonic MA combos, yeah

I believe one of the writers once mentioned Snake + Obsidian Shards + some other form Anys Syn using the web from CMOS and beating up an entire circle because of the -9 attack penalty and +2 non charm defence from cover added to base defence 8 from WoE making it almost impossible to reliably hit her

[tulip folio]

Hmm...hmm

Form Benefits
-The +1 Defence bonus from Medium Shields applies to Dodge in addition to Parry.

Pondering that updating of martial arts.

Basicly Crimson Pentacle Blade style is a cool style conceptually but was also...a mess...in 2e and hasn't turned up in 3e yet.

[velvet raft]

@bleak hazel Hey fun fact Flying Silver Dream in Arms of the Chosen can use a bunch of Solar charms without the wielder needing to know them

And it's moonsilver

[bleak hazel]

I was just talking about that one yesterday, yeah

Free excellent strike

[tulip folio]

How does that work?

[bleak hazel]

The sword's base power is that it takes off and fights with its own flying sword statblock scaled on your essence and willpower

so it just gets solar charms as you improve it because that was the best shorthand they could come up with at the time

you can't actually combine them with your native charms because they're on a different entity

Oddly I think the best user is Jimmy PAOC again, because activating E5 giga form a) means you don't need an artifact for your own attacks and b) puts Essence to 7 so the sword scales real high

Although E5 PAOC is unsurprisingly the best at a lot of things

[tulip folio]

I'm seeing a theme, yes

[velvet raft]

Use it with 4MM form so you don't even need the sword XD

(Yes I know this doesn't actually work)

[fierce star]

... wait are it's

hold one

so

alchemicals can learn solar charms with flying silver dream

[velvet raft]

No

You can't learn them

The sword itself, when flying around on its own, can use a selection of solar charms

[tulip folio]

...I think that was more 'Alchs can learn evocations that normally the artifact would know for their own systems'

But I think that one would fall under 'look, sometimes you just Need The Artifact to make this work'

That or you'd deploy a buzzsaw drone that knows the charms.

Rather than having them personally still.

[fierce star]

Yeah, let me get the wording real quick

so there's two points of note here

the first is 'the ST may rule out certain evocaitons if using htem with a given item wouldn't make sense', but the second is 'if the artifact has an innate power that's necessary for its evocations to function, she gains that benefit'

[tulip folio]

I think it would allow you to deploy any weapon you have equipped as the self-attacking weapon.

'Go my fist-drone'

[velvet raft]

Since the evocations never let you use the charms yourself

[tulip folio]

What's the cost to deploy the self-attacking sword?

[fierce star]

6m, 3 anima levels, and a willpower

it's the first evocation on the artifact

[tulip folio]

nods

The anima levels are the tricky part.

[fierce star]

Anyway since the alchemical's TMAM basically treats the alchemical as the artifact, I think RAW it works but RAI it's obviously silly, but I love these sort of silly edge cases

[tulip folio]

As I don't think it has any 'you can only do this one at a time' limitation, you could theoretically keep deploying more weapons.

As you can use it with any weapon you have, not just the singular artifact

But getting the 3 anima levels each would be difficult.

https://www.sapereaudeinc.com/cdn/shop/files/HuckebeinMkIIp5_710x710_bde5eed6-a672-4e33-8147-7f3c304788e1_2048x2048.webp?v=1682395019

Alchemical Deploying Inbuilt Flying Blades

[fierce star]

lol

[prisma sun]

I think an innate power is more something like Stormcaller's Intensity

Rather than when a charm says "This augments Thunder Heaven Hammer"

[velvet raft]

Huh, Fivefold Dragons' Grasp from Heirs to the Shogunate is wild

Smashfists that are focused on elemental bolt to start off with and then give their wielder a ton of stuff related to elemental aura

Eventually, with some windup, the wielder can get into two auras simultaneously

[chilly sluice]

Oh that's neat

[velvet raft]

Artifact thoughts for Hurricane of Goremauls Deeb:

• Unmade Earth Grand Goremaul: Without it, the exalt can't have [Heated] and [Chilled] or [Flowing] and [Rooted] simultaneously — newer cancels out older. Evocations would be about managing or using multiple of these states. Needless to say, it does not exist. Might be 4-5 dots? If it existed. Which it doesn't.
• Rising Flame: Gives the wielder [Heated] when used for a withering attack. Evocations need to spend [Chilled]. First evocation is some kind of very fast decisive attack thing.
• Falling Chill: Gives the wielder [Chilled] when used for a parry. Evocations need to spend [Heated]. First evocation is some kind of retaliatory defense that freezes the attacker.
• Wildsea: Gives the wielder [Rooted] when used for a decisive attack. Evocations need to spend [Flowing]. First evocation is a gambit that plants nasty wooden spikes in the target.
• Deepforest: Gives the wielder [Flowing] when they evade. Evocations need to spend [Rooted]. First evocation is a dodge that disorients and penalizes the attacker.

(Conceptually the idea is to base these on the elemental poles and the geography of creation)

[velvet raft]

Hm: another fun ISOB thing. Since it turns your unarmed attacks into medium weapons, you can potentially use them for defense while using weapons for offense

[mighty rover]

i've heard a few times now that Sidereals get weird fun dice tricks, but i haven't heard many of the details of that
could someone help explain the details of that

[prisma sun]

@bleak hazel Mechanics Professor

You'd know this better than anyone here I think

[bleak hazel]

Sids actually get less dice tricks than everyone else, because they're all concentrated into the Excellency, which is IMO the best one in the game

you can make an argument for Lunars, though

they tend to lack "double X" effects and instead get TN alteration, which has a tighter and more reliable dice curve than double X and more power than reroll X

[mighty rover]

i see i see

[bleak hazel]

any Sidereal with Ability 5 can stick -2TN on any roll for 2 motes, which is equivalent in raw average success terms to Double 8s

at E3 they can spend 1WP to hit -3TN, succeeding on 4s

Sid Prophecy and some of their charms can also increase the enemy target number to 8 or even 9

even Solars can't out-clash a melee Sidereal under a big prophecy

they may have more dice but you succeed on 4+ and they succeed on 9+

[mighty rover]

okay yeah that's pretty great

asymmetrical dice tricks are fun

[bleak hazel]

most of the time you'll be succeeding on 5s and they'll just have the normal 7s, but you can push it

in exchange, you don't get many dice tricks or non-charm dice elsewhere because your excellency means every extra die produces 0.7 sux rather than 0.5

where Sids really get weird with it is their deranged mote efficiency

their excellency is already very efficient - Att 5 , Ability 5, specialty, stunt and then a full excellency gets you 11.2 sux for 5 motes, whereas a Solar gets 11.5 for 10m

throw on World-Shaping Artistic Vision (pick a theme for your character, actions in theme ignore the mote cost to reduce target number), Heroic Essence Replenishment (10s on attacks give you some of the motes you spend on the attacks back as long as you're pumped about it) and Ways of Exaltation (+Anima level dice on all rolls with particular abilities)

you now cut that 5 mote cost to negative as long as you're at bonfire, presumably from activating some of your giant martial arts forms

[mighty rover]

wow

[bleak hazel]

let's dance, solar boy, I have infinite excellencies, passive parry of 9 and Overwhelming 4 with my bare hands, and I haven't even picked up a weapon, entered my Form or used any instant charms yet

then you get past essence 3 and your excellency dice cap improves to (Essence, max 5), so you get even more power when you need it

Sids are still somewhat weaker than Solars XP point for XP point despite all this, they get ahead of their celestial counterparts by carefully constructing these giant interlocking machines of martial arts forms, scenelong committed charms and seemingly-random stuff until suddenly you've been fighting this guy for ten rounds and he isn't even breathing hard yet

and to get to that point you need to not die when the Lunar dumps some tyrant lizard mega combo on you

[mighty rover]

amazing

[bleak hazel]

sids are generally less frontloaded than all the other celestials

Solaroids get Supernal, Lunars get all their shapeshifting at Essence 1

your excellency scales as you level, your really good MA stuff only shows up at Essence 3 and your mote pool starts off smaller than Lunars but increases faster, to the point they're the same at E5 and Sids actually have more motes at Elder level

so you have to be patient enough to unlock your earthshattering cosmic power

you won't be bored in the meantime, the lack of dice trick charms means that basically everything besides direct combat is all juice

Sid Craft is my favourite tree in the game

[tulip folio]

It also helps that sids thus can benefit super hard from tricks that come from martial arts or evocations or other artifacts. Like a sid gets more out of 'reroll a die' than a solar does.

As most dice tricks get powered up by the sid excellency

[velvet raft]

But it bears noting that all of that doesn't get up and running until essence 4

[velvet raft]

And to some extent, both diegetically and mechanically, martial arts "fill the void" for Sids in terms of relatively more vanilla stuff

[bleak hazel]

E3, actually, which is rather more relaxed, although in practice most stop with the E1 components there and only pay 1-3 motes per excellency in their speciality

[tulip folio]

I'll admit I often struggle a bit with good world shaping vision specs but it's still very cool.

[bleak hazel]

I like to treat it a bit like the old Infernal excellencies and go for something like "while blatantly obvious" but possibly that's being too much of a weasel

[velvet raft]

Oh wait Exaltation Ways is E3

For some reason I was thinking it was E4

[velvet raft]

For one of my sidereal creations, her WSAV is "with nothing in my hands"

So that applies to unarmed fighting but also to stuff that she's doing without tools

[bleak hazel]

decided to write an Exalted crafting guide, since I've been thinking about it more than I've been actively using it

is there anything people would want in there besides the obvious "breakdown of crafting power by exalt type, some suggested builds at various levels of investment, things you can do with craft besides make daiklaives"?

[tulip folio]

I think a 'minimum buy in' would be good. Like what's the earliest essence that things can really come online.

Like how sids can just Have The World Make Them Shit

But that's not low essence, so a sid crafter can't do that for a long time

And until then, they're not really an artifact crafter of note

Since 'how good they are when fully set up' and 'how soon they can Get Doing Things' are two different levers.

If that makes sense?

[bleak hazel]

yeah, that's definitely on the table

the Sid min investment artifact crafting setup is enabled entirely by their excellency being god tier, having lots of non-artifact things to do in their tree and 4-dots not being gigantic improvement on 3-dots, since you can just about brute force a 3-dot with raw sid excellencies and even without speed boosters it only takes three months

[fierce star]

I think a plain-language description of 'here is what this exalt specializes in as far as crafting goes, the thing they do better than other exalts with their native charmset', like alchemical factory lines and etc.

[tulip folio]

...oh, I've realized I entirely forgot to write 'what if you take this as your control spell' for that animated object spell I wrote a while ago. XD

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 3 for a child-sized doll, 4 for human-sized articulated dolls or 5 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. 

Shall need to work out one. XD

Maybe it lets you make Sentient Ones? Animated Statues are noted to be possible both as sentient and non-sentient versions.

Or let you take these things as Familiars?

[fierce star]

why not both, sapient statue familiars

[tulip folio]

Maybe 'You can have up to <essence> of these constructs as sapient familiars'. So you can't get infinite numbers of them but that's still a good number of pretty solid familiars (And I mean, as long as the Tyrant Lizard exists I don't think it's going to make 'get a weird familiar' too much).

[fierce star]

yeah

[tulip folio]

As the puppets are not bad but they're not really like '3 dot familiar' good, more like 2/2.5

[mighty rover]

me when i have to Instill "Every failure is a painful humiliation" (Minor intimacy) in this random bureaucrat because i'm bored

[tulip folio]

Control: If Substitutiary Locomotion is taken as a control spell, the caster can imbue their creations with a facsimile of intelligence, not just life. When the caster animates an automaton, she can dictate intimacies for that automaton. The automaton has a will of its own (Though it is still bound with unalterable loyalty to its master), allowing it to spend willpower on actions, have opinions and make complex decisions without oversight. It also grants the automaton a non-attack 8 die dice pool of the creator's choice (Such as music or stealth). The caster can have up to <Essence> willful automatons bound this way and can treat them as if they were animal familiars.

Added a control for this spell. How's it seem?

[velvet raft]

Huh, do DBs have any way around their lack of a weightlessness charm?

[velvet raft]

Other than Cloud-Treading Method, I guess

[fierce star]

Air dragon I believe?

[velvet raft]

Yeah, that's Cloud-Treading Method

Unfortunately not scene-long and requires 3 ability dots, but it's there

Might be worth investing in for Hurricane of Goremauls

Since she wears ISOB at all times

Would have to give up ox-body for it :(

Kinda expensive given how little of Air Dragon I'd be able to use

[fierce star]

yeah, air dragon is a very specialized style

I was looking at it for my alchemical since she uses chakrams and it might be fun to mix with TWG but there's just... so little there that isn't specialized in being sneaky or being dodgy, in the end?

[prisma sun]

Athletics lets them fly briefly

[velvet raft]

Even the dodgy would be fine if I could mix it better with Thousand Blades w/grand goremauls, but I don't think I can

I'm a teensy bit unclear on how defenses work re: having different style weapons that are being used simultaneously

Especially if the style is being used for a Dodge, not a Parry

But even for parries

Like if I have a parry of 7 unarmed and 6 with grand goremauls, and an evasion of 6

And I am unarmed because my grand goremauls are used telekinetically

And I have a thousand blades charm that can grant me +2 defense from heavy cover

I thiiiiink I can use that with the goremaul parry or the evasion, but not the unarmed parry?

[chilly sluice]

I think the cover bonus would just apply to all your defenses, but not quite sure

[velvet raft]

And then if I have dodge stuff from some other martial art, how does that work?

[bleak hazel]

how do you have more parry unarmed

[upper stratus]

specialty i assume

[velvet raft]

ISOB changes unarmed into medium weapons

[bleak hazel]

only for making attacks

[velvet raft]

Hm. The wording there is ... interesting.

Her metal-armored limbs deal lethal damage
and use the traits of medium weapons when she makes
unarmed attacks.
I think you're probably right, though

[half egret]

https://bsky.app/profile/grindagoat.bsky.social/post/3lpwzl2hkfs2e yknow what I'm glad someone's saying it

Grinda Goat🏳️‍⚧️ (@grindagoat.bsky.social)

looking at book art for exalted reminded me of how exhausted I am of the argument "If you're annoyed by the lack of libido in a non-erotic work, then perhaps you should just go look at actual porn". like. there's a difference between the tonality Having Libido gives a work and Capital P Pornography

Bluesky · May 24, 2025, 8:51 PM

https://bsky.app/profile/grindagoat.bsky.social/post/3lpwllra2hc2l Aunty Genny is a little tipsy and she's busting out the haterade

Grinda Goat🏳️‍⚧️ (@grindagoat.bsky.social)

-# ↩ 🦁 ✨ (@lunarstargaze.bsky.social)
they put this in a book they sold for money

Bluesky · May 24, 2025, 4:41 PM

[mighty rover]

huh they had Adam Warren doing Exalted art

[half egret]

YEAH

THEY HAD SOPHIE CAMPBELL

[mighty rover]

i would not have expected that but that makes perfect sense actually

[half egret]

THEY HAD AN ARTIST WHOSE DEVIANTART PAGE HAD PICTURES OF NAMOR THE SUBMARINER'S DICK

[half egret]

this is sauceless. it's barren.

i've seen less technically adept illustrations that still had ten times the character

[fierce star]

I do appreciate the 40 cakes reference at least

gotta be one of my favorite ex2 memes

[prisma sun]

This is 3e??

[fierce star]

Yep

2e's art direction was a lot, uh. I hesitate to say better because like, art is subjective of course, and such, but

[tulip folio]

Hell, I commissioned better art for Liminal Space and I'm all of one dude, not a major publisher. XD

[fierce star]

the core book

was bad

[velvet raft]

2e's art direction was all coming out of a fairly competent book mill

They knew how to pump out material

Onyx Path took a while to learn production

[quiet garnet]

I don’t recall seeing that top right pic, but yeah I was kinda surprised at the rollercoaster experience that was the art in the Solar book/core book

[empty creek]

Did they change it in later editions?

Because those look similar to what's in my hardcopy, except in mine they're...You know...Competent.

Like those are concepts or rough drafts

[half egret]

That sounds plausible

may have been during the kickstarter

[prisma sun]

I've not seen any of these in my pdf either

[lunar magnet]

I'm gonna be honest here. I can't think of a whole terrible lot of good art from White Wolf properties.

[mighty rover]

i remember a different cake scene

[lunar magnet]

But also to be fair to Exalted 3e, it has put out of of my favorite art pieces.

Because of a little background detail.

Let me go find Trauma Bear.

[prisma sun]

W5 has the best art direction of any WW book

Because wolfskulljack is in it

[raw owl]

I think that 3E ironically has a fairly consistent visual identity across the line. it's just a visual identity that sucks to look at

[prisma sun]

Well the core is not consistent

At all

The random anime style that comes up when they list all the exalts

[raw owl]

the core did set the tone for what came after, though, imo. idk, maybe im misremembering

[lunar magnet]

This? This is fantastic.

This is great tone-setting art.

[prisma sun]

All the other books are consistent

[lunar magnet]

Also another nice piece!

[prisma sun]

My favorite art in core is the dawn punching a gorilla

[lunar magnet]

So part of the inconsistency in 3e core is the 2e art that shows up, like this one.

This is straight up an Exalted 2e artpiece.

[fierce star]

Yeah, most of the anime pictures in the 'what is an exalt' portion are reused 2e art

being hoenst my visual, like, mental imge for exalted is still UDON and MelUran

[mighty rover]

oh huh

[lunar magnet]

And here is one of my favorite 3e artpieces. Not because of the main part of it, but because of the bear by her boot.

[prisma sun]

Question actually

Do the elemental poles move

[mighty rover]

i thought those would be all new, since one of them was Getimians

[lunar magnet]

Goodness no.

This circles back to my big complaint about Exalted 3e Core

In that it's fundamentally a half-assed, unfinished book.

Out of spite.

[bleak hazel]

the deeb book is consistently pretty good, I like that one

[fierce star]

I do not believe so

[bleak hazel]

nope

[mighty rover]

i've been liking it too

[bleak hazel]

although once you get far enough into the four peripheral ones it becomes quite hard to tell distance

[lunar magnet]

The later books are finished.

Not necessarily finished well in the case of Deebs.

But it is finished!

[bleak hazel]

I like the contrast between the Melissa Uran image of the Dragon Throne and the washed-out one in the front of the deeb book that's very much "gaze on the mythic image of Big Red"

this is some Ideology right here

[lunar magnet]

Also looking through the book, I'm not sure where they got some of these images from. Because here's that second one as it is in the book.

[bleak hazel]

then again a few pages down we have the derpiest Gunzosha in human history so we win some we lose some

[fierce star]

god I love the 40 cakes story

it's so petty

[bleak hazel]

they replaced a lot of the terrible art last-minute, in at least one case because someone was plagarising (the Chejop Kejak one)

also in the deeb book, the Prasadi look great, even if the lady has succumbed slightly to fantasy too-many-belts syndrome

[lunar magnet]

Oh good, we tie back into Exalted 3e was an unfinished book syndrome.

Found the Lunar Skunk picture in my copy of the Core!

[prisma sun]

Well the elemental poles have to move right

Cuz we've lost more of creation than we used to have

[fierce star]

They are capable of moving but don't like

wander like earth's poles do

[prisma sun]

So they have to get pushed back

[lunar magnet]

OK, found a piece of preserved bad art that still exists in teh book.

[bleak hazel]

that one is a little sauceless but it's basically functional

[lunar magnet]

And this is bad in the "Oh, this isn't finished."

[bleak hazel]

although as it's under the "social influence" section it should really have more juice to it

[prisma sun]

The abs aren't great

[lunar magnet]

I'm going to gesture to the faces and how neither actually really have eyes.

And the heavy sketch lines on the woman's armor.

[bleak hazel]

the thing is Volfer has good art elsewhere

[lunar magnet]

Correct!

The art is not bad because of any composition or framing choices.

[bleak hazel]

then we have the Craft section, which is about as high effort as Solar Craft itself

[lunar magnet]

It's bad because it's obviously unfinished

[bleak hazel]

those renderite swords in the back do feel like the kind of thing John "Craftgar" Smith the Craft Supernal would be banging out at a rate of 10 per second

[lunar magnet]

those ribs bother me.

[bleak hazel]

there is some really nice MelUran art in the core too

this is the Awareness tree art, I really quite like it

just a wildly hit and miss book in this, as in all things

[lunar magnet]

Yep yep.

Also, to cycle back to the original argument of Horny Art vs. Porn...

2e is

Verging more towards the latter than the former.

[mighty rover]

What happened there

[raw owl]

The elemental poles are deep in the Wyld aiui, so not necessarily

[lunar magnet]

There may have been a time where the elemental poles were centralizing, like how the Earth Pole is the basis of the Blessed Isle.

[fierce star]

So there's a LUnar that really hates the Guild. I mean, they are absolutely breathtakingly astounding mad at the Guild for al ot of reasons, mostly good. And this lunar's got a solar mate who is kind of isolated from the whole 'the guild are terrible people' thing because she's a twilight... baker. She exalted with baked goods. So this Guild factor in Nexus is having, if I remember correctly, a birthday party for his kid. So he needs a lot of the best cakes money can buy, so he hires the best baker money can afford.

[raw owl]

but even setting that aside, it's possible that they are stationary in a cosmological sense but the actual distance you have to travel to reach them isn't predictable by geometry or physics as we naively understand them

[fierce star]

So in an effort to stop her solar mate from being influenced by the guild, on the eve before the party, she snuck into the solar's bakery and ate all the cakes. That was forty whole cakes, and that was terrible.

[mighty rover]

Incredible

[lunar magnet]

Exalted is a tremendously serious setting, remember. 😛

[tulip folio]

...I always thought that Gunzosha armour was bigger than that.

[fierce star]

It has mutliple types

[bleak hazel]

also it is, in basically every art

[fierce star]

that's presumably like, a PA(L) type to use battletech references

[bleak hazel]

here's the Heirs gunzosha

the other power armour in the deeb book looks a lot more like this

Lookshy guy just looks a bit off model

the corebook deeb splash page is quite nice, until you notice the faces of Water and Wood in the back there

[tulip folio]

I'll admit, my mental image for Gunsosha armour is like...Fire Emblem Generals.

https://pm1.aminoapps.com/6309/03e23d0259e7f13a3ae5f3125aa5d30f86388825_hq.jpg

[bleak hazel]

Water is a bit peter griffin

[tulip folio]

Just a bit too big to be normal armour

[lunar magnet]

2e Gunzosha armor art.

[fierce star]

yeah that's a (slightly lumpy) fire emblem general

[bleak hazel]

2e had an (april fools, extremely silly) porn supplement, they knew what they were doing

[lunar magnet]

Another 2e Gunzosha armor.

[bleak hazel]

the 3e gunzosha comes out quite nicely honestly, I dig it

[prisma sun]

I imagined like

Garlean armor

[spring lynx]

there's also ashigaru

[bleak hazel]

these ones from the deeb book are a bit odd in that they're like half-power-armour, but the vibes are right

[lunar magnet]

This one is just a great look that I love.

[bleak hazel]

I'm just not sure what's going on with the fabric midriff covering

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/ffxiv-zenos-ff14-final-fantasy-gif-13809261

Zenos type shit

[bleak hazel]

also that abstract warstrider in the background is either a statue or has one hell of a story

[fierce star]

The best part about Scroll of Swallowed Darkness is that the mechanics in it were actually pretty legit and... I mean, on-par with exalted 2e isn't a high bar per se but you understand what I mean when I say they were good enough to work with the rest of the game

[spring lynx]

this is actually Sentinel Defence Force armour, which is an offshoot of ashigaru

[lunar magnet]

My bad.

Still a rad look.

[spring lynx]

my bad too, didn't mean to ping

[bleak hazel]

I kind of love that they took the time to redo the logo as "ExXxalted" just for their april fools joke

re: Gunzosha, I was actually playing with the idea of a starcraft-ghost type light gunzosha armour for a Sidereal the other day, but then I realised that even if you spend the 20xp to learn First Age Artifice on a craftsid, each roll to make FAA costs you XP

in sorcerous workings

Solars and Abyssals care a lot less because they can reliably one-roll anything below N/A, so they only pay 1-2 XP, but Sids and Lunars are spending a whole charm's worth of XP just making one suit

[prisma sun]

What WOULD Zenos be in Exalted

[spring lynx]

fire aspect

[bleak hazel]

fair enough that non-Solaroids aren't as good at Craft, that's a setting concieit, but I feel the XP cost is a jank way to do it

[lunar magnet]

Off of looks alone? That's an Abyssal.

[wise ocean]

Zenos is an Abyssal

[fierce star]

I don't feel like he reasonably fits into any neat hole in the exalted setting other than some sort of really wierd exigent, which are blobs for blob-shaped holes

[prisma sun]

https://youtu.be/_e-EnDBTfl0?si=zZCe4_ZI6_Ydpa9i

[fierce star]

like I can kinda see abyssal. I can kinda see infernal. I can kinda see straight up Solar. I can kinda see lunar even.

[prisma sun]

Yeah I can see it

Lunar only really for that one bit

[fierce star]

Also his deal with the WoL is absolutely a lunar/solar bond in action

it might be myf avorite representation of such in non-exalted media

[bleak hazel]

on the subject of art - the deeb craft tree has a funny one

Mnemon looking very smug as she finishes her life-sized Mnemon statue

[mighty rover]

lol

[bleak hazel]

and one more Gunzosha in Brawl

[tulip folio]

Better than 2e, where she'd be sadly making a mum-shaped statue, then killing whoeever saw it.

[empty creek]

I did like some of the classic WtA art

And Abrar Ajmal is pretty much THE visual for 1e WtF

Probably because he did most of the covers

[quiet garnet]

Deebs?

[chilly sluice]

Dragonblooded
DBs

[quiet garnet]

Ahh

[bleak hazel]

was chatting on the Exalted server about the new Sid companion MAs and apparently Crimson Panoply of Victory Style is "absurd ultrakill weapon swapping, the martial art"

I am kind of down for this

the 2e omnitactical battle hydras return but they're multicoloured rather than gold

unfortunately I cannot fit Melee + Brawl + Crane + Crimson Panoply + Prismatic Arrangement in one man

[quiet garnet]

Sid companion o.o? Will it release soooon

[bleak hazel]

some months still I believe

but it's apparently basically finished on the writing side

[half egret]

I gotta say this is more technically adept but also kinda falls flat

[vestal dew]

grumbles and wants to engage with this game more so bad but damned if it isn't a pain trying to find a second game to get into

[tulip folio]

Do Lunars have any training charms? I can't find non-mutation training for them.

[fierce star]

I don't believe so in ex3.

[vestal dew]

There's Wolf-Pack Training Technique (Lunars pgs.174-175) but I think that's the only one that gives battle groups permanent effects. There's a TON of Strength and Charisma charms that give temporary bonuses to battlegroups when leading from the front though.

[tulip folio]

Bother. Was looking for something that can train in non-combat things

[vestal dew]

Ah, damn. Sorry, haven't found anything like that. -_-;;;;

[tulip folio]

It happens. Was basically looking thematically for something to let me fairy godmother/Ursula the sea witch people, with the 'witch' subtheme of lunars.

[prisma sun]

I mean you can turn people into Beastmen if they complete a trial of yours

[tulip folio]

Sure but beastmen tend to be kinda overt and not really get bonuses for mental or social stuff.

Might need to homebrew up a training charm.

[tulip folio]

I'll likely base it on Instructive Simulation Needle for Alchs.

Where you commit motes to boost someone's skills/stats up to your own.

That feels fitting for 'doing some fairy godmother stuff where you give them a lot of shiny stuff but it won't last forever'

[bleak hazel]

more sid companion stuff

[wise ocean]

appropriately sized string instruments

[bleak hazel]

a new meaning to shredding with the guitar

[prisma sun]

YESSSSSS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkkyFNNaNH0

I'll make anime real no matter what...

@bleak hazel is any of the Journeys stuff posted

or is it just that

[bleak hazel]

just this so far

this is all just talking to the writers casually and them dropping tidbits, the proper preview is (I think) end of June

[tulip folio]

But what about inappropriately sized ones? XD

[bleak hazel]

ask Venus for an exemption, presumably

[next delta]

Does Creation's Smallest Violin count under certain circumstances?

[bleak hazel]

you can have a pretty small baton

this are my tiny starmetal zithers, I slide my hand under the strings and use them as brass knuckles

I am really excited to see what Crimson Panoply gets as Form weapons

kind of hoping it's "all of them" but the odds are pretty low there

[raw owl]

The spear, gladius, and shield naturally

[bleak hazel]

all we know so far is that it's not a sword style but it does use at least katars, bows and iron boots while being based around swapping weapons like a madman, so it's going to have a lot

and it's the house style for the Shieldbearers so I fully expect it to include those

I suppose there's a possibility it has each of the Battles constellations, so spear/gauntlet/shield/banner/quiver

whatever "banner" is

[tulip folio]

Hmm...Lunars do a fair bit with gossamer, do you think 'Lunar training charm that can do training but only temporarily' as you Fairy Godmother a situation weaving gossamer (Which will fade away within creation before long) is a reasonable follow up to the various Lunar Sorcery/Witch themed Intelligence charms?

Still tinkering with that 'lunar training charm' idea

[bleak hazel]

seems pretty plausible, yeah

also there's Even Blade in the sid book so I get to fiend over sword styles more

I wonder if any of them use hook-swords

need more Crane seasoning

[vestal dew]

Oh gods, Even Blade....

[tulip folio]

Oooh, even blade.

I hope it's fun

As to be frank: I think we have enough 'murder a fucker with lots of damage' just fine with Single Point. XD

I'd rather even hand do some Interesting Sword Tricks than be all about stabbing harder.

If that remotely makes sense?

[bleak hazel]

new even blade apparently absorbed a lot of dev time, which is unsurprising given what its whole deal is

[vestal dew]

I just want First Pulse style back in 3E (I think it's got an Essence writeup in the new companion?).

[tulip folio]

I did a homebrew update of it!

[bleak hazel]

we're getting a bunch of new "criminal" styles - no First Pulse or Orgiastic Fugitive, but derivatives thereof

honestly my go-to for First Pulse is Sid Brawl, because hot damn that tree is nasty, although it is a bit esoteric in comparison

[tulip folio]

Yeah, I tried to tie my update of it more into the 'urban' side.

It's not just about Dirty Fighting (Though it is that), it's about city fighting

[bleak hazel]

I'm not actually particularly hyped for Even Blade, it never really grabbed me

I don't think we're ever seeing something that remotely looks like 2e Cobra Style because it was absurdly ridiculously broken, but some parts of its lore could be neat if you remove the whole "anti-Sidereal fratricide spree" part

Sids in 3e aren't just murdering each other all the time

[vestal dew]

I just liked First Pulse for the bloody street brawler feel; I kinda likened it to the stuff you'd see in Def Jam Fight for New York.

(Which, yow, if you ever need Brawl Stunt ideas)

[bleak hazel]

It's a very Terrestrial style, not for any kind of power level reason but because you will be introduced directly and closely to the terra in question

[tulip folio]

Dream and Wonder Weaving
Cost: 3m per dot, 1wp; Mins: Intelligence 3, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: Stackable, Shaping
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisites: Penumbra Witch Mastery, Crossroads Walker Entreaty
Gossamer spills from the Lunars hands, as she works the substance of raw dreams with the skill of any Fae.

The Lunar grants a Willing or Helpless character up to (Intelligence/2, rounded up) dots of Attributes, Abilities, and Specialties, paying three motes per dot. She can’t raise a character’s Ability ratings above her own or grant specialties she doesn’t have. These gains are obvious to the shaped character as he find his body and mind shifting to incorporate these new capabilities, strange and both very familiar.

Granted dots and specialties work the same way as usual and don’t count as dice from Charms, although they can’t be used to meet Charms’ Ability minimums. The shaped character loses them if she ends this Charm, as the gossamer dissolves and returns them to mundanity. However, given enough time he can purchase these dots permanently by incurring experience debt, as the wonder becomes his true self. The amount of time before he can do so is equal to the normal training time for those traits, divided by the Lunars’s (Essence + Intelligence).

The new identity wrought by this charm is clear to all who can see it, allowing the character to ignore any penalties for differences between their previous look and the shaped look, such as for a different Gender or Body Type (Though they now suffer such penalties for disguising as their previous look). If the shaped character purchases the provided dots with experience debt, these changes likewise become permanent and cease being Shaping Effects.

The Lunar may use this Charm on multiple characters, paying the commitment cost separately for each.

With an Essence 3 repurchase, she can weave Roles and Story in gossamer. She may set a condition for these motes to become uncommitted, even if she is not personally aware of it. They must be directly related to the shaped character (The Stroke of Midnight or a Betrayal of an Oath are acceptable but not the actions of an army on the other side of creation). In addition, she can grant the Shaped character an Intimacy of her choice that is related to the shaped form (Such as a love of dance for a performer). This intimacy is by default Major, although a character may pay one Willpower to reduce it to Minor.

[velvet raft]

https://tenor.com/bKhYO.gif

[bleak hazel]

What on earth does "weaving roles and story" actually do

I'm sorry, that last paragraph is completely incomprehensible

[velvet raft]

... Blue Sid who is just Haruhara Haruko

She definitely has the craft charms for both social stuff and objects

World-Shaping Artistic Vision: "When exploiting others to achieve my own ends"

[tulip folio]

Sorry, that was just flavour for the 'you can set an end condition for this even if you're not about to know the end condition had triggered' and the 'You can give someone an intimacy when you use it'.

I'll try to make that clearer

[bleak hazel]

Yeah, at first glance I was like "is this a prophecy charm? huh"

[tulip folio]

Nah, it was supposed to get across you're working with deeper fey concepts with the repurchase but I'll try to make that more clear.

...this is getting a bit long. I'm gunna make the repurchase a seperate charm

Ends up same net cost but gives me more room to actually write

Fairytale Shaping Claws
Cost: —; Mins: Intelligence 5, Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Dream and Wonder Weaving
The Lunar draws deep upon the Wyld, warping creation into a story that she is writing.

When the Lunar uses Dream and Wonder Shaping she can expand her capabilities by drawing on deeper Fay concepts, such as narrative direction and character roles, allowing for any of the following effects:

All Dreams End: The Lunar may condition which will end Dream and Wonder Shaping, even if she is not personally aware of it. They must be either generally applicable or directly related to the shaped character (The Stroke of Midnight or a Betrayal of an Oath are acceptable but not the actions of an army on the other side of creation).

Dramatis Persona: She can influence the shaped character into the role she has granted them. This grants the Shaped character an Intimacy of her choice that is related to the shaped form (Such as a love of dance for a performer) which cannot be voluntarily weakened while Dream and Wonder Shaping is active. This intimacy is by default Major, although a character may pay one Willpower to reduce it to Minor.

A Hero's Spirit: While affected by Dream and Wonder Shaping, the shaped character benefits from Exalted Healing.

Broke it up and made it a separate charm to give me more room to work.

[chilly sluice]

is Silk Armor still obviously an artifact usually?
or could you disguise it as regular clothing?

[fierce star]

I believe by default it is still Fancy Enough To Be An Artifact, but I don't see why having a ribbon of 'can be disguised as fancy normal clothing' would be out of place if it's thematic for the armor in question

[chilly sluice]

pondering a set of stealthy/disguise focused silk armor for my Iselsi Deeb

I might make something like that the attunement benefit, if it's not too much

[bleak hazel]

normally "being silken armour" eats your entire attunement benefit, but worst case scenario you do the first evocation as a permanent or indefinite low commitment charm that gives you "looks like normal clothing + benefit to something sneaky"

[fierce star]

Honestly silk armor is already not worth being four dots comparatively, so if you're sticking with the four dot price I feel like one other minor ribbon isn't out of place for it.

like it's better than three dots, yes, but not so much better as to be worth four for 'can use with MAs' I feel like.

[chilly sluice]

I'm doing MA shenanigans that require me to be both unarmed and unarmored, so I figured some armor would come in more handy than another artifact

and I am very squishy, in perhaps some poor decisions

[bleak hazel]

What are the MA shenanigans in question?

[chilly sluice]

combining a bunch of the stealth based MAs
White Veil, Black Claw, Ebon Shadow
and a bit of Water Dragon to cheat around Terrestrial

[vestal dew]

My game last night:
GM: "So it looks like the Fair Folk presence in town is centered in the Blue Lantern district, at a particular inn."
Abyssal: "We should investigate."
Me(Full Moon): "We're not exactly subtle though. Also we're broke and that place needs dinars."
Solar: "Wait, can we borrow some from [Abyssal's Lunar Mate?] She's got as much interest in getting rid of the fair folk as we do."
Abyssal: "That sounds like a bad idea please do not"
Me, OOC: "HEY [Lunar Mate,] WE'RE GOIN TO THE STRIP CLUB, CAN WE BORROW A HUNDRED BUCKS?!"

[half egret]

this is what tabletop is all about

[bleak hazel]

wondering vaguely just how many Infernals we'll meet in the Infernal book

[velvet raft]

I'm so fearful that Infernals are not going to be Infernals

[bleak hazel]

presumably a smaller percentage of the Infernal host than the Sidereal one, because there are many demons to stat, but there are only 50 of those guys

[velvet raft]

Tbh if there's any Exalt faction to just give no canon exalts to, it seems like the Infernals

They're both extremely new and extremely few

[next delta]

Eh, they are as new as Abyssals? (Are there twice as many Abyssals or about the same?)

[velvet raft]

But there are twice as many Abyssals, yeah

And the Abyssals are generally much better organized, fwiw

[next delta]

I think all signs point to them being pretty different from 2E Infernals

[velvet raft]

At least if Esseence is anything to go by

euuuuugh

I hate Essence Infernals

[next delta]

I like them. But I never experienced 2E Infernals

[velvet raft]

They somehow took one of the most interesting Exalt types and made them one of the blandest

2E Infernals were people chosen by the Yozi for their failure and regret, merged with a demon and driven to embody essential aspects of the yozis' nature in order to utilize their powers

And a lot of emphasis was given to the way that demons are ... Hobbesian, at times, but not exactly evil (with some notable exceptions)

[tulip folio]

A lot of it was about how the Yozi that influenced them were themselves very flawed beings themselves.

SWLIHN wasn't just logic, it was her fundamental inability to get other people's emotions and how her logical aspects were a barrier over 'I'm an emotional being who doesn't like my inability to perfectly control my own emotions'

Or how Malfeas wasn't just strength but his fear of 'being weak' getting him hurt again. He didn't have his prior selfs endless confidence and he raged at what he saw was 'weakness' in allowing himself to let others close.

[velvet raft]

The Yozis were all very wounded beings, lashing out, and the Infernals had to deal with having the Yozis and their wounds as part of their own essential being

Well, except the Ebon Dragon, he was just a prick

[tulip folio]

The Yozi were just fundamentally not good at 'being people' and that was what drew them to mortals who had let their own flaws consume their chance at greatness.

[velvet raft]

And it bears remembering that in the Primordials original design, humans are not even particularly important, so there's a layer of deep misunderstanding to the very idea of making exalts for them

[tulip folio]

It's part of why I loved 2e Infernals despite the many issues. It was about hurt, shitty people attempting to achieve greatness despite all thier fuckups.

[velvet raft]

They did not and probably still do not understand the significance of what they've done and how they must now be in conversation with their chosen

Because Infernals have a unique opportunity to change the Yozis

For better or for worse

Much more than other Exalted they are living extensions of their patrons

And of their patrons' tremendous flaws

If it doesn't show I liked a lot of things about 2e infernals

[prisma sun]

In 3e I am fairly certain the split of Exaltations was roughly half?

Between the Yozis and Neverborn

[dense verge]

in crucible where it gives numbers to ballpark with for your games, split is 2/3 neverborn 1/3 yozi iirc

[velvet raft]

Right, that was the traditional breakdown

[prisma sun]

How weirdly specific

[chilly sluice]

~150 stolen exaltations, ~100 Abyssal, ~50 Infernal
is IIRC the breakdown

[dense verge]

as a collorary it also says to adjust the number of exaltations as appropriate

[velvet raft]

That was the deal the Neverborn and the Yozi had

You may be asking "why would the Yozi take a deal that was so much worse for them"

And to this I say: the Yozi are not very good at things

Just in general

[mighty rover]

buy ability for 3

[velvet raft]

Yes

Or, in any case, they have ability 0

[chilly sluice]

The Yozi are incapable of existing in a reference frame of normal people

it's just not possible for them

[velvet raft]

But cracking the Jade Prison was a teamup between the Yozi and Neverborn, and they had prearranged a 2/3 split

They did not expect half the exaltations to get away

[lunar magnet]

The Yozi also thought there would be less. They gave themselves a set number of Exaltations, with the expectation that they would get the lions share

The deal in 2e was as such:

After much back and forth and more than a year of hard negotiating, a bargain was finally struck. The Neverborn would have their tainted, rebuilt Deathlord minions break open the Jade Prison and—using devices built from the Yozis’ specifications—capture the fleeing Solar Exaltations. The Neverborn would tithe a mere 50 of the captured Exaltations to the Yozis, and the Yozis would, in return, reveal specifications for devices that would contain and twist those remaining Exaltations in any way the Neverborn desired. The low number of the tithe was a deliberate gamble on the Ebon Dragon’s part, meant to both entice the Neverborn and to hedge against their Deathlords’ potential failure of execution.

"We'll only take 50, and you get the rest that we capture! That's a good deal, right?"

[chilly sluice]

Ah, the Ebon Dragon made the deal

No wonder it sucks

[lunar magnet]

Every Solar Exaltation gets let loose

"Fuck"

TED thought there would be way less Exaltations coming out.

And was fully prepared to go "Oh no, less than fifty got out. I guess we get all of them!"

[velvet raft]

So basically he underestimated how good of a job the Neverborn would do

Which is ... very him

[prisma sun]

This deal does have a rewrite in the Abyssals book

That just has the pact be between the Deathlords and Yozi

Since the Neverborn aren't conscious in a way that let's them do Diplomacy

[empty creek]

I thought the whole thing was he didnt' so much underestimate, but did it deliberately to fuck over his compatriots

Because the Ebon Dragon is the platonic ideal of Being a Self-Sabotaging Dick

[fierce star]

He is both a self-sabotaging dick and also just kind of incompetent

[next delta]

Maybe he claims to be a self-sabotaging dick to cover for the fact that he is incompetent

[prisma sun]

I did check

3e does not actually give hard numbers on the split between Abyssals and Infernals

seems like

[mighty rover]

there's this in Crucible of Legends

[prisma sun]

Ah Crucible

[bleak hazel]

hmm, a charm idea sparked by the old "Rule Wisely Technique" joke

Cost: 5m, 1wp; Mins: Bureaucracy 5, Essence 3
Type: Supplementary
Keywords: Psyche?
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: a couple of things, I don't know

The Exalt wraps their advice in a skein of ancient sagacity, briefly making even the most outlandish proposal seem perfectly reasonable.

This charm adds [Wits/2] non-charm successes on a Persuade roll to convince someone to pursue or assist with a clearly described and specific course of action, or to justify such a plan to others. If the roll obtains less than this number of threshold successes, the target will only accept the proposed course of action as reasonable and attempt to fulfil it for the duration of the scene, at which point the target will conclude that the proposed plan is foolhardy and irresponsible in the extreme and abandon it, as if the Persuade action was never successful to begin with.

Attempts to convince a target to continue with a plan that they have abandoned in this way use the rules for overturning influence, and cannot be supplemented with this Charm.```

[prisma sun]

I would've thought they'd put this into the actual like

core books

[bleak hazel]

"he sounded so sensible when he asked for the launch codes!"

this is probably Solar, since it's quite boring

[quiet garnet]

Yeah, they wanted to avoid giving real hard numbers from what I recall of an interview. Like the idea is the Abyssals and Infernals are clearly not as numerous as the others, especially the Infernals I suppose, but there’s no hard number set by the book

[empty creek]

Or he's incompetent because he's a self-sabotaging dick

I believe it's actually outright stated that if the other Yozis ever found a foolproof way out of Hell, he'd sabotage it, even if it meant condemning himself. Because he can't be anything other than the ultimate crab in a bucket

[velvet raft]

tfw you realize your DB is already a wyld mutant so you might as well add more supernatural merits >_>

[upper stratus]

i don't understand how this relates to ending sidereals

[upper stratus]

the default salary is resources 3

[coral wraith]

the joke is they're underpaid right? the default salary is like, incredible pay for any given individual haha

[raw owl]

Yeah, all the money in the world doesn't do you much good if you never have time to spend it

[bleak hazel]

They do occasionally get to go "fuck it, five year sabbatical", but you rack up a lot of overtime in a thousand year life

[velvet raft]

It is specifically noted that sids do get a good amount of time off

It's less that they're necessarily overworked from moment to moment and more that even if they were, they still wouldn't be able to keep up with the workload

Also the work is extraordinarily stressful

[prisma sun]

Did someone get banned

I feel like half this convo went missing

[dense verge]

something happened here...

[bleak hazel]

useful for future reference

[mighty rover]

oh nice

[bleak hazel]

(not from me, it was on the reddit)

[velvet raft]

Not actually that bad, looking at it

It’s nice to have the flowchart but it’s just a couple of dice rolls to initiate a minigame

And in the minigame you can stop them from doing stuff, punch them, or punch them extra hard and forfeit the grapple

[prisma sun]

Grappling always needs a fucking flowchart

[bleak hazel]

it's mostly fine, it's just nice to have it laid out there

nowhere near as bad as the social interaction flowchart, which is a little deeper

grappling does tend to instantly detonate people in Exalted but that's mostly because of the wonders of zero defence possible decisive hits

[velvet raft]

Yeah, grapple stronk

[chilly sluice]

Grappling does seem like you just get demolished if you don't immediately break out

[limpid badge]

you'd see if that was so, we also usually try not to delete people's messages when they get banned unless its Spam or Truly Awful Posting

[prisma sun]

Why does it seem like half a conversation went missing then

[upper stratus]

because someone deleted their messages

[velvet raft]

The initiating post was deleted, yeah

I at least hesitate to clarify further out of respect to the deleting party

Although there was not a problem with that party’s conduct, imo

[limpid badge]

sort of a, if not one, then the other type beat yeah

[hidden elm]

https://www.twitch.tv/theonyxpath In case anyone's around, Onyx Path Con (online) is hosting an Exalted panel in about 20 mins.

(I am on the panel)

[bleak hazel]

tonight on Exalted: Two Sidereals leave a scene. One has dodge favoured and hits Avoidance, the other doesn't and improvises by flinging themselves bodily off the side of a mountain.

I choose to believe this is not in fact a big floaty Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon jump until the last ten metres or so, you just hit the button to cancel momentum like you double-jumped

[wise ocean]

https://tenor.com/view/kratos-gif-26454802

[half egret]

that sounds very Sidereal

[half egret]

Perfect Defenses Were Fine

[bleak hazel]

falling damage is weird these days because a) it's absurdly high for some reason, anything that inflicts fall damage in combat is basically an instakill and b) perfects only work on it if it's "uncountable damage", which basically means "falling much further than Extreme Range"

if you just fall a hundred metres Jimmy HeavenlyGuardianDefence is going to go splat

I think Wings Spread To Sky is actually the best fall damage negator I've seen so far

[prisma sun]

Simply tech it

[spring lynx]

just dark souls backdash

[valid summit]

that is weird to me, just because "jumping from an arbitrary height" is such a basic anime/ martial arts move

[prisma sun]

It is but also flinging people to their doom is such a stock trope

[valid summit]

hmm
true, true

[spring lynx]

but so is the previously-flung-to-their-doom person coming back because they teched that shit and you didn't confirm the kill

[wise ocean]

"heh... you should have proven I was dead..."

[spring lynx]

case in fucking point

https://tenor.com/view/tekken-heihachi-laughing-heihachi-mishima-tekken-8-gif-15611821937874933826

[tulip folio]

Every fucker in that series getting thrown off a cliff

[bleak hazel]

there was a guy in one of the adversaries books who has "if you don't find the body, he's not actually dead" as a charm

[spring lynx]

shouldn't need a charm for that tbqh

[mighty rover]

Charm gives you something to point at when your players grown after you pull this for the fourth time

[velvet raft]

Charms in 3e are mostly non-diegetic

They’re things that are true

Or that can be done

But they’re not themselves metaphysical constructs

[prisma sun]

Sidreal charms are however specifically diagetic

[bleak hazel]

also sorcery, necromancy and martial arts

and clearly some Lunar ones are diegetic because DBT is a very specific thing, so 3e goes back and forth on that one occasionally

but for the most part non-Sid ones are just Stuff That Happens, yeah

[fierce star]

Alchemical one are real as well, being actual physical objects

[tulip folio]

Yeah, you can Crippling Injury an Alch's Charms out of them. XD

'My arms, I need them for megatonne hammering'

[bleak hazel]

not from any of my games, but after seeing this I may have to use more Descending Horoscopes on my sids

[chilly sluice]

ouch

[velvet raft]

And that’s why messing with your target numbers is strong

[bleak hazel]

I still wish I could make Serenity In Blood versatile with Crane Style so I could TN9 someone and then counterattack for free, but I 100% understand why it's not

[mighty rover]

who is Lytek

[upper stratus]

god of exaltations

[spring lynx]

does he also cover exigence

[fierce star]

those exigences taht wouldn't count as 'inherited' exaltations, yes

at least I believe so

[prisma sun]

He also covers exigence but he isn't in charge of transferring them personally or anything

[bleak hazel]

the abyssal PDF is now out for backers

it is very nicely laid out, although some of the art is a bit drab

a few things I thought were a bit cracked got nerfed, QOL tuneup on Medicine and Necromancy was big, looks very good

[velvet raft]

Excellent

Now they just need to not fuck up infernals (they are going to fuck up infernals)

[bleak hazel]

the iconics still look extremely boring but some of the art that doesn't have them in is much better

compare and contrast

"why is my PC stuck in A-pose"

vs the cool parts of the Abyssal Resistance tree

[half egret]

Oofa

[velvet raft]

"3e iconics look boring" is almost a running theme at this point, imo

There's also so much less reason for them to exist without the comic inserts of 2e

[chilly sluice]

the Abyssal iconics do feel especially sauceless though

Abyssals should look a bit extra at least

[velvet raft]

Say what you will about the 2e iconic solars, they weren't visibly boring >_>

[bleak hazel]

the Lion stats are cool as hell, although I'm not sure about their headshot

[velvet raft]

Not bad, but could be better

Glad they statted Falafel

[bleak hazel]

Falafel is the one statblock in 3e so far that Anys Syn cannot solo

at least without breaking out all the martial arts she is implied to know but doesn't actually have on her sheet

because with all of those she can construct some horrible situation where your enemy needs to hit def 13 while suffering a -6 penalty to all attacks and at that point she can just T-pose while FAFL (and basically anything else) can't hit her more than a fraction of the time

[prisma sun]

Falafel also can't defend against extreme range kung fu

[velvet raft]

At which point I expect he gets to pull out his own stuff >_>

[bleak hazel]

yeah, the warstrider and the first age airship, plus the giant army and the abyssals

I am unsurprised that Extrapolated Anys Syn can beat him up in a whiteroom, given her deal is basically that she is the Most Punchy but the dev calibrated her actual sheet to be a good but beatable challenge for an E5 brawl/resistance solar

[velvet raft]

Yeah, I mean more that I expect Extrapolated Falafel is also a thing

[bleak hazel]

I think his sheet is probably a fairly good reflection of his swording

[velvet raft]

Statblocks are always compressed

But yeah

[bleak hazel]

Anys Syn and other Sid Elders can be extrapolated without much uncertainty because you can disassemble their combos into their component moves and then deduce all the prereqs

she uses PC rules, she's just really big

not so with ghosts and deathlords and so on

[velvet raft]

Either way, it's good that they made him The Ultimate Challenge so far

Because like

[bleak hazel]

FAFL is a bundle of unique stuff so I'm fairly sure that's meant to be a fairly accurate depiction of how strong they are in personal combat

[velvet raft]

Yeah, he should be

[bleak hazel]

he's still a raid boss by himself

or by themselves, I think FAFL is purely they/them in the new book

gender: walking fridge

[velvet raft]

Oh okay

[bleak hazel]

gender removed by neverborn

[velvet raft]

Gender: War

"I identify as a threat"

"Your pronouns will be was/were"

[bleak hazel]

I actually really like the current spread of endbosses, because we have Anys Syn (friendly duel) and Anys Syn (GM puts in the work to make her serious-mode) as the ultimate whiteroom duel monkeys, FAFL as the classic WOW raid with all their armies and war machines and then various behemoths and manses as more normal walls of stats

I can simultaneously believe that Anys is the most dangerous exalted martial artist bar none and that dispatching her to go beat up major setting threats solo would be silly

I do think the Lunar elders and some of the deebs got a bit short-changed because the devs hadn't invented combos when they statted them

so Anys can kill Lilith in one counterattack

[velvet raft]

Yeah that seems wrong

[bleak hazel]

which is a little lopsided

[velvet raft]

I guess the logical next endboss statblock would be ... I dunno, fuckin' Ligier?

[bleak hazel]

I can buy "Anys Syn can probably take Sublime Danger or Lilith in a fight" but not "lol, no diffed"

[bleak hazel]

I personally want to see the Bishop, he has a horrible gribbly rage monster form, SMA and third circle necro

that has to be a real showstopper

[velvet raft]

True

Just thinking about for lines not yet released

[bleak hazel]

but yeah, the logical pick for Infernals is sunboy

for Gets we know it's Rakan Thulio

[wise ocean]

I don't think you can fight Ligier in a way that matters

[bleak hazel]

oh you totally can

he will come down in human form just so you can do that, due to being Malfeas' vainest godling

[velvet raft]

Ligier is noted to be an extraordinary martial artist

Also he's very much A Guy a lot of the time

[bleak hazel]

we know Chejop is E8, Thulio is E9 or even E10

[velvet raft]

Is Thulio supposed to be The Strongest Person Period?

[bleak hazel]

Ligier is 10, natch

not in a facepunching contest

[velvet raft]

Ah

[bleak hazel]

I believe the devs said that he'd go about even or just about barely lose to Anys, despite being much older and higher essence

Chejop is definitely less killy than Anys Syn because he's the arch-schemer

but Thulio in aggregate is probably the strongest exalt, yes

he is elder by elder standards

[velvet raft]

But yeah Ligier is maybe the single greatest warrior in Creation, Malfeas, and the Underworld combined, he is the combatant

He's the defining soul of Malfeas

The king of the primordials

[bleak hazel]

the old sequence for fighting Ligier was that if you survived the passive death-radiation of approaching the physical Green Sun, he'd send out his legendary sword to fight you on its own

[next delta]

He gets a bonus for fighting by himself in Essence, which I found funny

[bleak hazel]

if you defeated the Sword of the Yozis and looked cool enough (circle of strong celestials, entire army of deebs) he'd take human form and come down for the final showdown

[velvet raft]

"Can Ligier beat the UCS?" is probably a question sids and demons debate when they get really drunk together

[bleak hazel]

personally I like the interpretation of the UCS where he's old and weak and withered at the Games and not actually King Shitkicker Extraordinaire, but this is pure vibes and not an accurate reflection of lore that we don't even have for 3e and was completely different in 2e

[velvet raft]

I do like that take

[bleak hazel]

anyway, I am pretty sure we're getting Ligier in the infernal book because come on

[velvet raft]

Although I think maybe I'd have him be like ... christ, I hate this comparison, but All Might from MHA

Where he has one fight left in him

He can go all out one more time

[bleak hazel]

Ligier is Him, he rules from his green nuclear hellfire orb in the Him-alayas and occasionally walks to creation to annihilate Himbuktu, I would be very disappointed if we didn't get his stats

[chilly sluice]

the impression I got of UCS is that he is still exactly as unbeatable as he always was
he's just mostly too depressed for it to matter

[bleak hazel]

yeah, that's the default interpretation

not that we have much on the Games in 3e, they have deliberately left it open

we're going to get a whole pile of lesser bosses in the sid companion because man is this a stacked cast

Ura, Kejak, Green Lady, Kijamano, Holok and Strike-The-Heart are all either fullblown elder masters or senior enough to be packing full SMAs and charm combos

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/lord-of-the-rings-the-oden-lotr-stare-old-gif-16247877

Also for my interpretation

Anys Syn can probably take down most if any of the major setting threats solo

But the problem is that she cannot also take on their entire operations

So she can't take on lions entire army and the mechs and the abyssals and also falafl

[bleak hazel]

yeah, that's pretty much my take too

[prisma sun]

So anything like that requires either an army backing her up, which doesn't exist, or a dedicated strike team to hold everything off while she does

[bleak hazel]

the Aerial Legion is a (literally) god-tier army but also incredibly difficult to actually use for anything, which is fun

[prisma sun]

Yeah the Realm and Heaven do in fact have an army that could do this

but would they?

Fuck No

[bleak hazel]

yeah, not unless FAFL decides to march on Whitewall or something

and FAFL is one of the two deathlords least interested in Creation

they basically pop out to do some light pillaging and burning occasionally to keep the neverborn happy and go straight back to trying to conquer the entire underworld

[next delta]

Isn't FAFL also in a location that makes it hard for him to march anywhere significant with his full force?

[prisma sun]

They kinda changed it in 3e

They aren't stuck in the desert now

But they're mainly just in Stygia

[bleak hazel]

I could see the Sids dropping the full elder kill team + deeb support on Winters if he tries some additional bullshit, but that's about it in terms of those targets

the Sids are very busy and the deathlords are not hugely high priority

[prisma sun]

The Green Lady: "Please for the love of god"

"send me Anys please"

[velvet raft]

The politics and history around the Aerial Legion are a wonderful part of the Sid book

[next delta]

Wait, Blade is in the marvel universe?

[prisma sun]

Yea

[velvet raft]

Always has been

[quiet garnet]

How did they come up with the new iconics for 3E?

[quiet garnet]

Falafel? Come again?

[velvet raft]

First and Forsaken Lion -> FaFL -> Falafel

[quiet garnet]

I was about to be very confused if that was a legit Abyssal name

[velvet raft]

Really we should have food nicknames for more Exalted power players

We've got Falafel and Ketchup

[quiet garnet]

https://tenor.com/view/blinking-eyes-huh-what-really-gif-7953610

[prisma sun]

Conch

The Maddens

[quiet garnet]

Now you’re just pulling my leg

[raw owl]

Steak & Shake

[velvet raft]

Chejop Kejak -> Ketchup

[bleak hazel]

usually Ketchup Carjack

[quiet garnet]

https://tenor.com/view/xal'atath-xalatath-wow-worldofwarcraft-thewarwithin-gif-2957388467886880062

[velvet raft]

Shit I've got one

@bleak hazel I think you might like this one: Anise Seed

[bleak hazel]

Elder Sidereals are all a) terrifying and b) tend to attract funny bits

there's also Red-Handed Kijamano, who I always read as Kilimanjaro

[prisma sun]

"Ha, funny Anus Lady"

Anys Sin, Ten-Fold Master Of The Fist:

https://tenor.com/view/kenshiro-ken-hokuto-shinken-no-gif-20059140

[empty creek]

Matcha Sushi?

[fierce star]

giving in-setting badasses ridiculous nicknames is a long white wolf game tradition

[lunar magnet]

Not even just limited to white wolf

Robot Girlyman comes to mind.

[fierce star]

Lemon Rough

[errant knot]

would anyone be interested in Charm Cascades for the Lunars?

It's a little project I've been working on, making charm cascades. I'm starting work up for the Terrrestrials soon and was hoping for feedback, perhapst

[velvet raft]

You mean like visual workups of the existing charms?

Yeah, that would be great

[errant knot]

yeah

[velvet raft]

I don't understand 3e's aversion to that, really

[errant knot]

it's more like prerequisites/trees but I was inspired by the cascades for the Solars

here's an example

[velvet raft]

Fantastic

Good job

[bleak hazel]

a good chunk of the existing trees have been done by someone who took up the torch from Madletter, but more compact versions of the Lunar trees would be nice because they have tons of them

[errant knot]

I'm not sure how compact I made them but I tried to make them readable at a glance

[bleak hazel]

Abyssals may need some tweaking because their book has only been out one or two days, but so far this is the spread IIRC

https://www.reddit.com/r/exalted/comments/1dow6dh/charm_cascades_madletter_style

[errant knot]

... abyssals are out already?

[bleak hazel]

the shiny PDF is out to backers, at least

[errant knot]

ah I see

[bleak hazel]

probably one or two rounds of minor errata first, since there's a few holes that people spotted fairly quickly, but the basic setup is done

[errant knot]

I'm making this more as a reference but that's really quite slick

I'm about to start on Terrestrials, like I said, and I thought I'd revise my previous template a bit

(I think I was inspired by MadLetter, but I'm not looking to be as in-depth)

Something along these lines

the tabs indicate elemental affinity, whether it has Aura as a tag, and whether it's Balanced

for Excellencies and Signatures I was going to put some kind of box around them

[velvet raft]

Tempest Fuck Power

[raw owl]

Many such cases

[tulip folio]

brb, writing an alchemical upgrade to Thousandfold Courtesan Calculations 😛

[errant knot]

lmaoooooo

just placeholder names for "this is what it'll look like"

and I realized I changed the color of Wood in it, oh well

but what do you folk think, is it readable/clear enough?

does it convey shit?

[velvet raft]

Yeah

This is all information I'd want to know while looking for charms to take

"Should I even consider this?"

[errant knot]

Hooray!

[quiet garnet]

So if any of y'all ran an Abyssal campaign, what region and/or city of Creation (or the Underworld) would y'all start the campaign in?

[bleak hazel]

I am currently playing one of the Silver Prince's diplomat abyssals in the West, which is looking like great fun, but if I was running a whole circle I don't think I'd be able to resist the temptation to start in or near Thorns

there's just a lot to do around there

writing up the Skullstone ~~ East India~~ Western Isles Company is kinda fun actually, since there's tons of stuff about the trade lanes in here and the skullstone writeup comes with some pre-arranged internal rivals for Crimson Rain to scheme against, an arm of the Guild to blatantly tear into and a bunch of fun locals

I want this goddamn island, this is right where I want all my stuff

painting a cool new caste mark design on the Viceroy's forehead, despite the fact he is a fellow vassal of Skullstone

[wise ocean]

congratulations on your appropriately abyssal scheming

[bleak hazel]

Skullstone has a bunch of already-existing trading stuff, so I've written up their old import-export arm who used to control trade with the dependencies but were steadily shunted out of the way by the Viceroys as Skullstone assimilated more land

Crimson picked that up and is steadily turning it into the West Underworld Company, which the Silver Prince is probably mostly down for given one of his objectives is "bully the Guild out of the West with exclusivity deals"

[velvet raft]

Scavenger Lands as The Default Exalted Setting just works

[errant knot]

Archery done. Just 25 more to go

how's this one looking?

might separate the ones at one of the intersections more, make it easier to see at this zoomed-out size

[fierce star]

It looks pretty good, and the three-wide formatting is good for mobile devices I think

[errant knot]

That's a good point; unfortunately it's not something that's going to be consistent

[fierce star]

fair

[light olive]

Reviewed my ideas for a homebrew yozi. Currently have bare bones ideas for ten different souls.

[mighty rover]

rad

[prisma sun]

I have an abyssal concept

One of the wondermakers of the first age now enslaved to the Neverborn

And so hyper fixated on the loss of grandeur in the world that he's only token creating monstrosities to unleash on mortals and is more focused on reinstalling whatever first age tech he can find

A giant corpse crab assaults your village, the next day a city sprouts a mile away

[quiet garnet]

The Walker in Darkness seems....nice

[prisma sun]

I think I would make this guy a Falafle abyssal

Just two guys who absolutely hate each other and who's working relationship is done entirely through emails

[fierce star]

'this email could have been a wuxia duel'

[tulip folio]

Hmm...does anyone know if there's a changelog from the backer abyssal document and the final one? Or if it was just prettying up?

[fierce star]

There's a couple changes but I don't know of a changelog

[tulip folio]

Oh boy, gunna need to find the changes so my brain isn't working on the backer version

[quiet garnet]

Is there any 3E art of The Mask of Winter?

[prisma sun]

The Waking Smith of Scrimshawed Bones is a Daybreak Abyssal who has taken to his new role as a Deathknight with frustrated gusto. Swimming through the sea of memories regarding the First Age and it's wonders, he travels through Creation repairing and restoring whatever he finds. Though not intently unselfish, his attention span with such wonders quickly fades, leaving marvels lost to time simply out and about for the first people to find. An accomplished necromancer and corpse-smith, he keeps to the Chivalry of Death through the creation and deployment of freakish experiments and monstrosities. He finds this a tedious maintence of his actual interests, but is far too prideful to skimp on the effort in terms of creating such horrors. Sometimes he will slaughter and meld a village into one pillar of flesh, other times simply turning the bones of a long-dead Tyrant Lizard into a mosiac masterpiece. The only things that limit such cruelty are his creative whims and expediency. He doesn't take any particular pleasure in killing innocents, nor is he particularly adverse to it. He simply finds it boring, and would rather find material in less troublesome ways. He at least seems to understand the immorality of his role as a Deathknight, and has happily faked his death to several foes, mortal and immortal alike, and left behind grand wonders for them to find, if only because such assumptions prevent pursuit and allow him to work in peace.

Guy who is in a pitched battle for the fate and life and death, people pouring their souls out about how one cannot rob others of their life liberty and love who really just wants to go home and make cool robots.

[bleak hazel]

two pieces, one nicer than the other

[tulip folio]

The first one really makes him look like a chunky boy in a halloween mask. XD

[vestal dew]

In previous editions he seemed like one of the few Deathlords who would actually like, talk to people and broker deals while still stumping for the End Of All Things. Unfortunately there also wasn't ever a lot of material or mention of him either.

[quiet garnet]

It's clearly this picture that's the superior one

https://tenor.com/view/black-cauldron-caldeirão-mágico-disney-horned-king-rei-de-chifres-gif-11760687

[tulip folio]

I do like the new take on Lover Clad In Raiment of Tears. There's just enough to keep some parts of her old stuff if you want it but it's very clearly in service of the end of all things instead of 'Well, we need a slutty deathlord and faffle said it's not allowed to be him'.

[quiet garnet]

I kinda dig how the Mask of Winter and Silver Prince are just "Pfft, fuck the end of the World. Not interested." but for two different reasons with the Mask maybe appealing more to me. "Well if the world ends I can't win the game." and how he also engages in quite a bit of realpolitik.

[vestal dew]

Oh the Mask is a viciously spiteful bastard to boot; everything he's done to absolutely raze Thorns' old culture, and his unleashed forms of biological warfare through things like the disease that animates your skeleton inside your living body....

[next delta]

Going "fuck the end of the world" too explicitly is why the Lion got messed up right?

[tulip folio]

The distinction imo is that Mask is the guy who likes the competition and takes challenge as a reason to improve. Sure, he's got Hearts of Iron 3 Brain and is a real asshole but it's Silver Prince who seems to be the one who wants to win but never be challenged. He's polite and urbane and classy...up until the point when you make him feel threatened.

[vestal dew]

Yeah. Mask's basically overplayed his hand in that by sacking Thorns, the other Deathlords have to get more active in order to not look like they're slacking off.

(Given they're all egotistical jerks that hate being forced to do anything, this has not gone over well in their views of the Mask)

[fierce star]

HoI3 specifically, not HoI4brained

[quiet garnet]

What's the Lion like?

[raw owl]

serving butch realness

that was only partially a joke. the lion is an egotistical warlord in the classic saturday-morning-cartoon mold

[tulip folio]

There's also a lot of Darth Vader there where he hates what he's become but that just makes him angrier at everyone else instead of going 'Hey, did I fuck up and cause my own problems?'

[raw owl]

his quirk is that unlike the other deathlords who are all also egotistical warlords, he's like. a military guy. a career soldier who runs his forces like a military because that's what they are

he's Jagganoth Killsixbilliondemons

[tulip folio]

It's noted that he was a lot more reasonable to his troops before he got stuck in the metal suit.

[raw owl]

he's not fetishistically obsessed with evil superweapons, he just has evil superweapons because air superiority wins wars. he helped cause the Great Contagion as the planetary-scale equivalent of flinging diseased carcasses over castle walls during a siege

he's got like nine hundred thousand war ghosts or something

im not even joking, i believe that was the canonical 2e figure for the Legion Sanguinary's main force

all of that is however much less interesting to me (terminal yuribrain) than the toxic robot butch/evil femme thing he's got going on with the Princess

as previously mentioned

there's probably some Romance of the Three Kingdoms character he's like a 1:1 match for but idk enough about that to speak intelligently on it

[tulip folio]

He's also one of the deathlords that is kinda bad at rulership. He runs an army, not a nation.

His plan is to just wander out and take over everything

No need for civilian infastructure at all.

[wise ocean]

Welcome back Beggar One

[quiet garnet]

Lu Bu maybe?

[raw owl]

was lu bu ever consumed by the desire to possess a hot goth chick who hated his guts? i feel like that might be more of a cao cao thing

tho again i do not know enough to say

[wise ocean]

who wouldn't

[raw owl]

you know what. i walked into that one. it is pretty close to a human universal

unrelated:

https://bsky.app/profile/ztul.bsky.social/post/3lgozqbxivc2t

michael lutz (@ztul.bsky.social)

If there's a lesson to be learned in all this, it's probably that

(notices a sable galleon drifting into the moonlit port )

never mind boys, looks like our night of adventure isn't done yet!

Likes

106

Bluesky · Jan 27, 2025, 3:46 AM

this is Moray Darktide

[quiet garnet]

Well the desire for a goth girl? Yeah that might be more Cao Cao. But Cao Cao was not a bad governor. ....Lu Bu on the other hand. Lu Bu wasn't necessarily a bad general just got a helluva temper and pride (Romance of the Three Kingdoms doesn't do him too many favors) but at least within the story his whole thing was bouncing from one master to the next as his love interest kept amping up his ambition to where he thought he could try to conquer everything on strength alone. From what I recall.

My favorite thing was Lu Bu's final moments where he desperately tried to convince Cao Cao to recruit him.... Cao Cao, the dude who had already seen Lu Bu betray I think three people by this point.

[raw owl]

starscream ass

[dense verge]

i'll add that FAFL got a bit of a revamp in 3e, not to the extent of some other deathlords, but some things did get changed such as no longer being responsible for the Great Contagion, and also is they/them now

[prisma sun]

Also isn't a shamed little guy in the desert

but instead is just conquering Stygia

and is sometimes going "eh I guess I'll go out and kill some guys"

[dense verge]

i believe that the stray he/hims in the abyssals draft got cleaned up in the final

[coral wraith]

Yeah the Dowager is the one that unleashed the Contagion

[bleak hazel]

FAFL is one of the deathlords that just doesn't really care about creation

They're no longer purely stuck in the desert but they also wouldn't mind much if they were, because their only creation-side stuff is the occasional burnination to keep the Neverborn happy

[tulip folio]

I do forget the they/them aspect. I should be better about that.

[bleak hazel]

Gender removed by neverborn, replaced with walking fridge armour

[fierce star]

"What is your in pants?" "Oblivion."

[dense verge]

rewrite slapped their gender right off

[tulip folio]

'Neverborn gave new body and Body Dysmorphia.'

[fierce star]

Homie's pronouns really are was/were tbh

[coral wraith]

Good

[tulip folio]

But yeah, 3e did a lot more to make the deathlords more distinct.

[bleak hazel]

Given FAFL has a warstrider and a giant airship sized to fit their huge armour suit, I have come to the conclusion that their gender is "Large"

Always more armour

[tulip folio]

As they were mostly divided into 'Comically evil' and 'evilly comical' in 2e.

Like mate, you don't need to spend your entire unlife setting up weird schemes with your old circle's reincarnations that involve you going bugs bunny in drag just to 'make it more effective' before you torture them.

2e was odd

Eye and Seven Despairs got a lot better in 3e.

[bleak hazel]

Silver Prince no longer has a giant doom fleet but is otherwise same as ever

Lover, Prince, Walker and Mask basically just kept doing what they were doing, the others got a bit of a tuneup

[tulip folio]

I think Lover changed more in the 'why' than the 'how'.

She's still doing her previous thing of 'I will destroy the concept of love' but there's more...philosophy...behind it.

[bleak hazel]

Oh yeah, Prince is no longer weak to one random rock in his archipelago

[tulip folio]

It's unstated if Mask is still illiterate but I'll admit I keep them such just for the joke

[bleak hazel]

or running a giant soulsteel forge for his entire population mostly to provide protagonists with a Dark Secret to find

[tulip folio]

I like the 3e setup where he has volunteers for soulsteeling because of how well he's made his nation all about his philosophy.

It makes it a much more interesting place instead of 'Oh yeah, this place seems nice but it's got a dark secret'

And more 'oh yeah, this place doesn't have a fascist death cult. This has a fascist undeath cult'

I think the changes to lover are very...well, in 2e she's on the list of 'Deathlords I'd never use in a game as I find her dull'.

While in 3e I actively tied my Sidereal to her.

So I think it's a vast improvement, clearly. XD

Glacier Jade hates her so much.

She's also fucking terrified about how the Lover doesn't hate her back and seems more 'Amused/She'll come around'. As in the end, all passion dies.

[bleak hazel]

My one complaint with 3e Prince is that he has his shit so aggressively together it's sometimes hard to figure out things for my Abyssal to do that my Deathlord isn't already doing

He's a sword guy and a sailor and a trader and a diplomat and a bureaucrat and he has his own complex social philosophy, plus he's tucked away in the corner of the map where nobody cares and he has a Solar attack dog

Then again I did go for Socialize/Craft/Bureaucracy as my ability spread so I kind of walked into that

[prisma sun]

Hit his ass with a Tsunami

[tulip folio]

'Get involved in Green Lady Shenenigans'

[bleak hazel]

I have mostly settled on scuttling off to build the Underworld equivalent of the East India Company and arm wrestle with the guild

[coral wraith]

insurrections at home

[tulip folio]

Biggest upgrade with 3e Prince: Not being stated to have been Desus.

[fierce star]

wasn't that Eye?

[tulip folio]

Nah eye was this minor shitty solar who just exalted and got bullied by his circle

'The weakest Solar gets kicked out of his circle but actually he's a powerful deathlord and gets revenge' now streaming wherever you watch anime.

It's somehow less creepy than Redo of Healer

[fierce star]

ah, fair enough

[tulip folio]

I do love in 3e how Walker in Darkness is perhaps the most accidently failing deathlord.

He's powerful, he's achieving things but he's such a believer in the Chivalry of Death it's given him reason to exist and a love of unlife

So he's now further from Oblivion than he started.

[coral wraith]

Failson (cool style)

[tulip folio]

I do kinda miss his 2e 'You're X caste, go do X caste things' but I can understand why they removed that competency issue.

[prisma sun]

I need to pick a Deathlord for my new boy

to get a better idea of what he's about

[empty creek]

2e Eye was pretty much "I don't want to end the world, I just want to spend all my time torturing the reincarnations of my old Solar Circle and only do actual Deathlord stuff when forced to"

[tulip folio]

Now eye spends his time making necrotech for the fun of it and occasionally being foiled by Perry the Platypus Lunar.

[empty creek]

god, I can hear and see it in my head

"A platypus Lunar?"
Hat
"PERRY THE PLATYPUS LUNAR!?"

[prisma sun]

I want a Deathlord he's actually not actually all that compatible with

I was thinking FAFL

[empty creek]

Foffles wants scary necrotech monsters and doesn't care about his sense of whimsy

Not just is unwilling to humor it, is basically incapable of understanding it

[prisma sun]

Being the art kid when your parent is a Boeing Military Contractor

[tulip folio]

I think ironically lover is one of them for the simple reason of: She's one of the few deathlords who's good enough at necrotech to not need him.

She has similar capabilities to him but none of the interest in it

[prisma sun]

Isn't Lover still in debt to Forsaken?

[dense verge]

heron's the one in debt iirc

[prisma sun]

Lover and Princess get mixed up for me

[tulip folio]

Princess Magnificent is a lovely, wonderful person who brings joy to the underworld.

Heron Busy Putting the Laughter in Slaughter

God forbid women have hobbies.

[merry arch]

so fucking true

[velvet raft]

Yeah Lover is by far the Deathlord with the most kills to her name

Because Great Contagion

She killed 90% of Creation

[tulip folio]

That's not the Lover. The Lover is up in the North doing her 'all passion dies' thing. The Great Contagion was the Dowager.

[velvet raft]

Ahhhh

I cannot keep all of them straight either apparently

[tulip folio]

My thoughts on why the lover is the one who least gets along with Eye is that Eye is a creature of passion. He unlives for creative problems and creative solutions.

And unlike a lot of them that don't get along with eye on a philosophical level, she doesn't really need what he's offering.

She's the other Void Circle Necromancer among the deathlords

She can do it herself

[velvet raft]

Right

[tulip folio]

I have fun with how my Sid who is otherwise very Gokubrained and lives to fight powerful foes is terrified of the Lover.

[velvet raft]

As they should be

The Deathlords are terrifying

[tulip folio]

Glacier Jade: "Well, now that I'm in heaven, I'm a least beyond her reach...she killed my entire tribe but...she can't do more to me, right?"
A box arrives at her home IN YU SHAN, with soulsteel artifact armour forged from her family and friends and a note promicing that she'll see her again

[prisma sun]

Drifts would fuck over a Deathlord
Not in combat or anything but he would steal their house

[tulip folio]

I've rambled before about Jade's artifact armour. Which is both A) Horrifying B) Really tempting for a Sidereal. XD

[errant knot]

Anyone know offhand if there are any martial arts that use regular swords?

[coral wraith]

Violet Bier has omni-sword capability, basically

[errant knot]

I thought because it specifies slashing swords that it disallows non slashing swords

[tulip folio]

It’s also compatible with chopping swords, great swords, short swords, slashing swords, straight swords, knives, staffs, and seven-section staffs. Unarmed attacks enhanced with this style’s Charms can be stunted to deal lethal damage.

[tulip folio]

...ironically, it doesn't mention Hook Swords. I think that's likely an oversight. XD

Neverborn: "We need a plan to drag Creation into Oblivion. What have you got?"
First And Forsaken Lion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-lroAtSTgU&ab_channel=PyFChiapas

[coral wraith]

Weird!

[errant knot]

I was just looking at violet bier earlier. I'd check rn but I don't have it on my phone. Either way, ty for the text!

[tulip folio]

If you're interested in homebrew ones I also did up a SMA that's all about swords.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AIBgU41XmOoG64RyeaLlbXiS8dLyohKjfCUdnbpIFjk/edit?usp=sharing

[bleak hazel]

There's also Bishop, who was at the front of the line when the deathlord treats were handed out because he has both Void Circle and his SMA

[coral wraith]

He's just that cool

[tulip folio]

Huh, didn't know he had void circle. I thought that was just Eye and Lover. Kinda surprised, considering they've kinda taken away Lover's Martial Arts aspect.

[fierce star]

They did take away the Bishop's 'walking mountain of sexual organs' form, so there is that.

[next delta]

Why... why did he have that?

[bleak hazel]

he still has a gribbly rage form, it just no longer has a very specifically enumerated number of penises as it did under previous writers

[lunar magnet]

White Wolf.

[bleak hazel]

Bishop is my personal pick for "second most scary personal combatant in Exalted", with first being Ligier

Anys Syn is a better martial artist, FAFL has stronger armies, Dowager or Leviathan probably have scarier giant monster forms etc., but he's basically second place or nearly so in everything except necromancy, where he's the best

[chilly sluice]

I find the style of his SMA hilarious

You just stand in place ominously while everything around you has a bad time

[bleak hazel]

yeah, it's the WoW Raid Boss martial art

it's also nearly all Simple charms

you do one move per round, very methodically

[chilly sluice]

Getting to activate it all reflexively when someone tries to hit you is also extra funny

[bleak hazel]

has an interesting interaction with Crane

where the Crane stylist can just float above the morass of terrain hazards and then they just kind of stare at each other because they're both counterattack masters

although Crane will steadily get chipped down by some of the AOEs

[fierce star]

Hmm. Do I want stealth, athletics, awareness, larceny or survival as the apocalyptic for a day-caste abyssal who is definitely not based on Sniper TF2
(please ignore the 'Defining Principle: "Feelin's? You know who has feelin's? Blokes what bludgeon their wives ta deaf wif a wrestlin' trophy. Professionals. Have. Standards.")

[bleak hazel]

it's not a perfect spec for duelling, it's very heavy on the crowd control, but Bishop doesn't care, Bishop has a zillion motes as a high ranking spirit and can just mash the expensive buttons calibrated for Exalted mote pools

[bleak hazel]

I am personally a fan of Abyssal Athletics and the stealth tree is a bit annoying to GM for, but there are many available options

Abyssal Larceny is good fun

other thing I like about Albicant is that it is basically an Endings MA but uses all the concepts differently, so it doesn't end in the traditional manner

and that gives a Sid an amazing opportunity to deploy the arc words and finish the scripture differently

[fierce star]

nods

[limpid badge]

hiiii exalted friends!! i have a psa~!
https://forms.gle/1r3tSRTBZakttdrJ9
a friend of mine is doing a solar rewrite and wants a temperature check to work off of so they made this survey, please take it thank u

psa over!!! posting is NOW

[prisma sun]

why I gotta give my email :c

[limpid badge]

prevent spam effectively

[tulip folio]

Gave my thoughts!

I"m sure they're terrible. XD

[limpid badge]

oh iki don't ever talk like that about yourself around me again

ur too cool a dude to be self depricating

[winged swallow]

hello. i am the friend in question.

[mighty rover]

glory!
can i post this in the fabula server, there's a surprising number of Exalted players there

[tulip folio]

...oh bugger, I forgot to add something I wanted to to the document.