Exalted

[winged swallow]

oh shit she does have app 5 lmfao

[bleak hazel]

Dusk Classic

Cathak Cainan is kind of getting there but he has too much other stuff going on

[tulip folio]

We mathed out some time she's almost certainly cha 1 manip 1, so she went tertiary social and put all her points into app

[bleak hazel]

textbook ISP

[winged swallow]

i realize now that og harrow was definitely a kind of invincible sword princess

[bleak hazel]

the only unusual thing is that she has a heavy weapon not the classic medium daiklaive

I'm not knocking the concept of the Invincible Sword Princess here, they're great, it's just a fun archetype to spot

[tulip folio]

Glacier Jade would likely have a bad time with Benny. She's incredibly gokubrained for a Sid and a melodramatic fucker. She'd 100% walk into the blender going 'Nah, I'd win'. XD

[bleak hazel]

I think she'd be a pretty decent fight for Vigil or Rival at E4, honestly

at that point the SMA bullshit is well and truly online

and she's big and scary and beefy but not just an instant barrage of [solar mote pool/10] attacks

[fierce star]

man now I'm reminded I need to find another abyssal game at some point for Queen because she keeps living in my head rent-free but wasn't good for the game I was going to play her in due to ghosts being immune to disease.

and poison.

And environmetnal effects.

(well,m ost of all three)

[bleak hazel]

still not sure on what SMA to put on my Detective Sid

coinflip between Obsidian Shards for drip and CMOS for well-roundedness and different drip

admittedly Endings Swordsman with Obsidian Shards is probably insanely stereotypical but what can you do

[fierce star]

Emerald Gyre feels kind fo detective-y ish?

[bleak hazel]

it's probably the closest fitting, but doesn't really work with Sid Melee's combat style

[fierce star]

darn

[bleak hazel]

it's very much about piling on and raining in attacks to build onslaught, whereas Sid Melee likes to take the occasional turn to aim + full defend to recover motes and set up decisives

you can play Sid Melee aggressively like that, they have a great charm for it, but I haven't been

designated bullying charm

(if you're using VBOS, you should have this)

[tulip folio]

I home-brewed up Mystic Eyes of Death Perception a SMA for jade.

[bleak hazel]

Emerald Gyre does have Striking Through Eternity, which is really fun

stab
"that wasn't so bad, I guess I'll leave"
stab wraps around the infinite cycle of time and hits them again on the way out the door

but in general I just really like Obsidian Shards and its steadily escalating chain of nonsense capstones

[fierce star]

futures best avoided also looks really fun

[bleak hazel]

every single Obsidian Shards charm feels like it should be accompanied by its name slamming onto the screen one word at a time like the popups in SuperHot

BLACK
SHARDS
FALL
LIKE
ICE

slashslashslashslashslash

[bleak hazel]

incredible anti-ambush defence, unfortunately I already have really good Awareness investment so it feels a little redundant

it beats Expected Pain, granted, but also... Expected Pain

[fierce star]

fair

oh histories yet unwritten is really cool

[bleak hazel]

I have yet to figure out how to use that

you could get five dots in Citrine Poxes before learning it, then just fill in the entire physical healing suite

[fierce star]

well, my immediate thought wa s'you learn sorcery by taking charms'

and technically each time you take it it oculd be a different future, so that's a different spell you could pick up...

[bleak hazel]

really you want to learn four charms you actually want in reserve and keep the last slot "open", rotating it through the charms you actually want to learn

[fierce star]

which a GM would be well within their rights to say 'no'

I'd say yes, but i'm stupid

[bleak hazel]

because that's one of the only listed training speed multipliers in the game

x9 training is really convenient

[fierce star]

that's also true

[bleak hazel]

the best charm in Emerald Gyre is Lotus Labyrinth Durance, though

hard to land, but so juicy

defining intimacy of my choice or fuck you

[tulip folio]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AIBgU41XmOoG64RyeaLlbXiS8dLyohKjfCUdnbpIFjk/edit?usp=drivesdk Will have to put this to the test but I had fun making it.

[fierce star]

The Moment That Is Murder is so cool

[bleak hazel]

which can be used for cute little zen koans or can throw you into a groundhog day loop of being butchered by a Sidereal over and over and over until you internalise OBEY

[fierce star]

especially with it's enlightenment effect

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah that one's pretty neat

it does cost infinity motes, admittedly

[fierce star]

25m is a lot, yeah

how beefy can siddies pump their JB?

[winged swallow]

locking unarmed users outta any ma is wiiiiild i gotta say

[bleak hazel]

basically excellency only but man is it a good excellency

[tulip folio]

They've got it too good. 😛

[bleak hazel]

the main thing is that using it reflexively to open a fight means you don't get any of that +onslaught damage or auto-ambush triggers

[winged swallow]

th-they do not

[bleak hazel]

I feel this would be a good place for the old effect of Blade of the Battle Maiden

where the unarmed strikes have the exact same effect as they would if you were wielding an invisible sword

hmm, would "your unarmed strikes are mundane medium weapons" break anything too badly if shared with other MAs

trying to figure this out

doesn't boost overwhelming, has a slightly lower accuracy bonus but gives +1 parry and a little bit of damage

[tulip folio]

I don't think it would

[bleak hazel]

also, does the Form have a reflexive activation condition?

[tulip folio]

It should but i forgot to finish that.

Will have to include one

[chilly sluice]

you can already do this with Invulnerable Skin of Bronze IIRC

makes your unarmed count as medium instead of light

[bleak hazel]

that is specifically attacks, so you don't get the +1 noncharm parry

I guess you could just do that here too

someday I want to see the PAOC/VIOD duel where someone goes for Time-Slicing Blade and it gets hit with Essence Redirection Technique

time is only meant to go one direction, stopping in one place is one thing but it probably shouldn't be able to go ana or kata

[tulip folio]

Hahahah

'Oops, broke reality'

[bleak hazel]

sometimes I consider writing an SMA for all the weird information theory stuff I've found myself reading these days but I genuinely cannot come up with any good charms for it

I suppose I could somewhat reinterpret Scarlet Patterned Battlefield and try to actually give it the juice

[tulip folio]

The juice is tricky with sma and my big worry, if things are cool enough.

As sma have a high bar for cool effects

[bleak hazel]

both the 2e and Essence variations are just dripless, with the sole exception of the 2e version's capstone which is the only one people remember for reasons other than "this charm was broken"

[prisma sun]

I think you could just write an SMA's flavor and then like

Do an Anys Sin where you write a charm that is "This is the main combo"

[winged swallow]

what SMA principles do we have thus far

when i say principle i mean like, their core philosophy

[prisma sun]

Consumption

Breaking

Time

Essence

[bleak hazel]

consumption through the lens of spiders
wholeness/wellbeing through the lens of plague
time through the lens of cycles
possibility through the lens of mirrors
essence through the lens of all Creation
death through the lens of... death, I guess, the Bishop is unimaginative

[prisma sun]

"Listen man there's only so many metaphors I can use here"

[bleak hazel]

and then soon we're getting Sapphire Veil of Passions, which is relationships through the lens of sex

[tulip folio]

'This grave symbolises your death'

Ah so we got big death and now we're getting little death.

[prisma sun]

Sapphire Veil of Passions be having "One Inch Punch Actually It's 7 Inches I Swear"

[wise ocean]

this sword symbolizes the sword I'm going to use to kill you [kills you with a sword]

[bleak hazel]

Sapphire Veil was quite well-regarded, I think, it was one of the only 2e styles that wasn't incredbly broken

[winged swallow]

amethyst edge of severance moment

[bleak hazel]

I am guessing this is not going to be what this charm does this edition but I kind of dig it

Bluesid, what does SVOP say about his power level?

[winged swallow]

||it’s over 9 inches!||

[prisma sun]

breaks scouter "He really wants to have sex with me but also wants to kill my family"

"also he can fly"

[bleak hazel]

ah, evidently you've fought him before

[winged swallow]

i’m very funny, and mature, i swear

[wise ocean]

does it count as a negative intimacy to have "I actually like casual sex" considering svop is going to exist and dreaming pearl currently exists

also black claw

[bleak hazel]

the second charm is very silly, because it's a classic teleport dodge that just happens to have a maximum range of 80 miles

[tulip folio]

This is unironically a lot of the inspiration for mine. That Endings are part of an eternal cycle, through the lens of a blade. XD

[bleak hazel]

amazingly there were several 2e abilities that you could not successfully gapclose with this charm

[tulip folio]

Things end but everything remains

[prisma sun]

Someone mails me a letter calling me gay and I accidentally end up 3 counties over

[bleak hazel]

there was also a charm where you imbue an attack with the "male principle", presumably by drawing a dick and balls in stardust, and it ignores soak and sets peoples motes on fire

right next to scenelong onslaught negation

honestly this is kinda fun, these charms have juice

[tulip folio]

As the Abyssal view of the end is fundamentally incompatible with the Sid concept of the end. If that remotely makes sense?

[bleak hazel]

sometimes I wish 3e had kept the popular fan concept of SMA Heretical charms

where you got a multiple-choice option for the capstone, either Accept or Reject the philosophy of the whole thing

so Obsidian Shards has Breathing on the Black Mirror or some kind of enforce-determinism charm, etc.

would be kind of hard to do for some of the less strange ones, though

PAOC has Oblivion, obviously, but I'm not sure what a CMOS heretical charm would be

[winged swallow]

there were some really wild keywords in 2e huh

<- just read the Blasphemous keyword

[tulip folio]

'Do you accept time's progression? No? You've unlocked: Mid-Life Crisis!'

[bleak hazel]

Blasphemous was a bit of a problem because the Sid book was so botched that they basically could not oppose a remotely optimised infernal without SMA, and SMA were botched in the opposite direction and were functionally unstoppable

so it basically reads "Put your GM into a catch-22"

[winged swallow]

it’s just so funny to me

“if you use this charm, heaven is gonnafucking GET YOU”

[bleak hazel]

luckily Ebby has an entry-level charm to completely fuck all fate-reading forever just kind of casually, because fate had the consistency of wet tissue paper back then

[winged swallow]

“every god in your radius KNOWS you’re using this and hates you”

“the imperial manse has a full dox readout on you”

[tulip folio]

It's a lot more durable in 3e

[bleak hazel]

Sid Prophecy not being Shaping/Psyche is kinda fun honestly

if a Sid manages to get the E4+ whammy prophecy on you, you are In Trouble

[winged swallow]

and while i understand Why they removed it, i don’t hate the Obvious keyword

[bleak hazel]

(unless they're being nice, in which case it's fucking great)

some of them aren't devoid of use, no

[winged swallow]

like there’s some shit that should, by all accounts, be Very Obvious Yes

[bleak hazel]

SVOP ended in an old-style Shrike charm, which I previously thought had been changed into reflexive-clash options until Alchs got one as their capstone

so I'm interest to see if they keep Thousand Desire Ribbons' shrike effect

[winged swallow]

like if i’m throwing out a Crypt Bolt, someone should be able to go “oh shit that’s some fuckery”

[bleak hazel]

(presumably nerfed to something more like Transfinite Ultraviolence Drive rather than this bullshit)

[winged swallow]

ah, TUD my love

[tulip folio]

What alch charm is that?

[bleak hazel]

dex capstone

utterly terrifying, albeit Simple and ends when crashed so there's a warmup

[winged swallow]

turn on autochthon’s own sandevistan

[bleak hazel]

reflexive withering clashes with at least 3m of free excellency

got to use the Sid perpetual motion machine to fight that

[tulip folio]

Need to pose dramatically.

[bleak hazel]

there's also Anciliary Battle Consciousness, for when you want to retreat into your robobrain and watch cartoons all fight while your fight suite does it all without you

it's half of CMOS Form, with discounts on a few charms instead of the third init track

alchs have some really fun endgame kit

also it has literally the only counter in the game to this charm

every other splat has just kind of memory holed "when you crash a target, instantly knock them out"

[tulip folio]

Hahahah

It's kinda a bullshit effect

Do you think 'If you'd kill someone, just knock them out' is worth a charm or is that just a minor stunt?

[winged swallow]

seems like a minor stunt 2 me

or even just

don’t use lethal damage lol

[tulip folio]

Pondering interesting ways to beef it up yeah.

[prisma sun]

Yeah it'd be a stunt

Like if stunting for lethal damage is a thing you can stunt for bashing

[winged swallow]

yeah agreed

[tulip folio]

Thinking of making it bless a fight so all non-aggravated damage is bashing, regardless of people's intention.

Turn a deadly fight into a farce

[tulip folio]

Shadow and Starlight Stage Play
Cost: 5m, 1wp ; Mins: Stamina 4, Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: Perilous, Shaping 
Duration: One Scene 
With a wink and a flourish, drama becomes farce.

The Wanderer tweaks the tone of a scene, blunting the blows of attackers. All damage dealt during this scene is bashing and cannot exceed the target's incapacited box. Characters other than the Wanderer may attempt to resist this effect  either through defences against Shaping or by spending 2 willpower.  

A character who does so is unaffected for good and for ill. They can deal non-bashing damage but do not gain the protection of this charm to convert damage they suffer into bashing.

This effect extends even past the end of any fight until the end of the scene. This makes executing downed opponents impossible but does not stop capture for later punishment. 

Reset: Once per scene.

[fierce star]

I'mf orgetful, you can enhance a charm that grants you an attack as a simple action with other reflexive charms as long it follows normal ability compatibility rules right

[bleak hazel]

yes

[fierce star]

I believe I can add one more poison to bad touch abyssal then, but I have to double check everything

[bleak hazel]

you can also enhance with supplementals

also hmm, I just had an idea for a new and much simpler Sail system, namely "Sail is just a variant on Strat Manoeuvre which your roll with Sail, using a set of standard strats that all ships have - your ship being equipped with fancy stuff like implosion bows or a first age hull would give it a couple of specific cooler ones"

you don't need a whole combat system for boats, you need a way to have the boats inform the kung fu fight

[winged swallow]

if there's anyone i trust to make a better Sail system, it would be you, numbers fuckstein

[bleak hazel]

honestly the core idea is basically just "you know what works pretty well? War and Battlegroups, what if I just make boats work like war and Bureaucracy work like Battlegroups"

ambush is broken, but I will endeavour not to write Boat Ambush

[next delta]

I like how it works in Essence (though maybe boats need more health). Though, boat time and regular combat time working together is the main thing I'd want

[bleak hazel]

I should have a look at the Essence system, then, no idea how essence boats work

Exalted's core combat and social resolution systems are robust enough that I'm reasonably happy just turning most other systems into modifiers thereof

looks like there's an existing Sail rewrite that follows roughly the same pattern as I was thinking of, except more complicated

although it does keep naval stuff isolated from the rest of the game

[next delta]

They get a free move each turn and otherwise characters can take ship actions (and ships have their own stats including Power)

[bleak hazel]

Sid Companion now in art direction

Sapphire Veil soon (TM)

[velvet raft]

Eggsellent

[bleak hazel]

relevant solarposting

[velvet raft]

And this is why Alchemicals are the superior model of Exalt

Oh, quick question: do we know if written High Realm is pictographic, or if it has an alphabet?

[bleak hazel]

Old Realm has an alphabet, I believe High Realm does too but I will check momentarily

Old Realm as put in the books is the Latin alphabet with different symbols, the script on the front of the books is just the name of the splat in Old Realm

[velvet raft]

(The best answer is really ancient Egypt's: they had pictographs and they also had a set of those pictographs that could double as an alphabet)

[bleak hazel]

Its written form is a phonetic alphabet of complex brush work characters

alphabet as per core

[velvet raft]

Danke

[next delta]

The real hero is whatever exalt made the language such that it remained phonetic for its entire existence

Maybe there is an office in heaven responsible for this

[bleak hazel]

Old Realm is a magical bullshit language because gods just Know It by default, but I like to think it has local dialects in the Terrestrial spirit courts

[velvet raft]

It would be fun if there's minimal linguistic drift among people who need to use Old Realm because for magic purposes it has to be just so

[bleak hazel]

Sid shows up for an audit but because Sids are taught High Yu-shan dialect instead they sound like Stephen Maturin

perfectly intelligible but posh and mildly archaic

[velvet raft]

But the moment you get outside of people who need to use it for magic, it starts drifting

[fierce star]

Which terrestrial court speaks the equivalent of kansai-ben?

[spring lynx]

i kinda miss 2e Old Realm

like, look at this shit

[mighty rover]

huh

imitation Mayan?

[spring lynx]

and like, that same book i pulled that from has a whole five-page syllabary to go along with this

[spring lynx]

i think they're more going for kanji

[winged swallow]

as far as i’m concerned, it’s still this

[spring lynx]

like, structurally anyway

except the radicals are phonetic

[spring lynx]

actually no, looking more into it, you're probably right

right down to reading order, even

[mighty rover]

iiiiiinteresting

[spring lynx]

obviously of course the actual syllables are different, because it's just a cypher for english

i guess it makes sense, given the dominant species before humans was mayan-coded t-rexes

[bleak hazel]

apparently one of the Secret Techniques in the sid book is "World-Spanning Weaver Strike"

mount meru spinkick coming right up

[tulip folio]

Death in Effigy seems...overpowered as fuck for Solars and Abyssals.

'Motes = extra successes on crafting' feels like it could blow through double digits in necromantic motes

[bleak hazel]

I believe I already went "hang on this is broken as hell" on that one when the PDF came out, but I didn't realise I could report it in the errata form before it closed

hopefully they cap that part

Having initiations that work with Craft is great, you just need to avoid hooking them into the high energy craftsicle accelerator beam that is "using craft successes for literally anything else"

[tulip folio]

Yeah, it needs at least a cap

[tulip folio]

I do wonder how potent a Terrestrial 'Does withering damage' spell would be. Likely single target, being terrestrial.

[winged swallow]

hmmm

struggling for more cool e1 archery charm ideas that don’t tread too close to abyssal archery’s icy deal

wildly tho

core had a charm that was about Big Aim and i couldn’t find a mirror for it

wondering if i can steal that somehow

[velvet raft]

I think not everything needs to be mirrored, and you should definitely have an Aim line of charms.

[winged swallow]

i'm not trying to mirror everything lol

but it speeds up the mechanical writing

anyway

the charm i looked at in core is called Seven Omens Shot

i like patient sniper shit

but 3 rounds is pretty crazy

seems i gotta find a sweet spot between what i want and like "Combat Ended And I'm Still Waiting To Shoot"

[velvet raft]

Yeah, 3 rounds is way too long for an in-combat charm

[winged swallow]

yeah

like

i liked where they were going with this, but jesus christ

this is for solars? have you seen how fast combat with solarkin can go?

[prisma sun]

I think the sniper stuff is meant to be out of combat

[velvet raft]

Although I could see Solar Archery having something like that one K6BD archery martial art, where we're told a story of a practitioner aiming for something like a week in order to hit from like five miles away.

[winged swallow]

oh yeah i know the one you're on about

yeah maybe, as a higher essence one. less of a combat thing and more of a.. well, i guess it would be kinda narrative in a sense

[velvet raft]

Yeah

[winged swallow]

writing that down just in my notes bit

[velvet raft]

I guess I can see three directions to go with aim:

• aiming for a long time to do crazy stuff
• aiming for a normal time with additional bonuses
• aiming very quickly and getting normal bonuses

In the broadest possible strokes.

[winged swallow]

that certainly seems like it'll be one of the tree mechanics at this rate, yeah

[bleak hazel]

Seven Omens Shot has exactly one use case, and it's "combat hasn't started yet but the GM is letting me take prep actions"

ther are upgrade charms for it to make it take less time to proc, the initial useless variant is very much designed to be a Supernal Tax

[winged swallow]

i mislike this

but it is nonetheless inspiring

[winged swallow]

also, we don't give solars mote stealing charms, right?

or do we

i can't tell if they're like Abyssal type shit

[prisma sun]

Sids and Lunars both can

But I think its meant to be framed as transgressive to do so

[bleak hazel]

they're Abyssal tech and sometimes Wet Deeb tech

Solars have no dracula charms outside the completely shambolic lore tree, although "burns away enemy motes" is a bit more in theme

[winged swallow]

so abyssals, sidereals, lunars, and dragon-blooded can steal motes

[half egret]

https://www.tumblr.com/armoredprincess/789881395748241408/quit-your-job-join-my-unemployed-martial-artist

that's not music you hear (that's the devil)

quit your job join my unemployed martial artist wandering harem

-# #unemployed martial artist wandering harem

Tumblr · Jul 23, 2025, 4:53 PM

[merry arch]

https://tenor.com/view/jetstream-sam-my-beloved-gif-22029076

[winged swallow]

oh hi genome

also sure ogay

i'm taken shortcuts
<- already unemployed

[winged swallow]

also, as an aside

i'm taking suggestions for eclipse charms to build out

since i wanted to make a bunch of em for folks to just Use if they play a reforged eclipse

[velvet raft]

Would it be useful to think of them along the lines of ... how to put this?

[winged swallow]

and they're fun Mental Resets for me to work on while i work on solar native charms

[velvet raft]

Almost the same set of divisions used for hearthstones?

Not written in, or anything, but in terms of thinking about and planning them.

[winged swallow]

hm

elaborate

[velvet raft]

For instance, you could plan to have Essence 1-3 charms corresponding to the five elements, the underworld/ghosts, the wyld/raksha, heaven, and demons/Malfeas. Of course, that's a lot, and I imagine you probably don't want to plan to do that much, But those sort of divisions.

Thinking about it, even just a few eclipse charms for ghosts, raksha, demons, and elementals generally would cover a lot of ground.

Including in the practical sense of giving the Storyteller defaults to use for granting the training as favors or rewards from allied spirits.

[winged swallow]

slow nodding

i like this categorization

you have any ideas for specific eclipse charms you'd like to see?

can even just be like. a sentence and what kinda spirit has it

[velvet raft]

Thinking. For all that I am tempted by the thought of a straightforward blast charm, I think that is probably not the right way to go.

[winged swallow]

you say this, but there are certainly Straightforward Eclipse charms

[velvet raft]

True. Actually, if you intend to keep anything like the Occult charms that let you learn eclipse charms, that could be a way to backdoor some basic blasting and/or shielding stuff that might not otherwise be in the Solar charmset.

[winged swallow]

given that most celestials have ways to pick up spirit charms in Weirder ways than Eclipses do

i will probably keep some kinda element of that

there will be a solar beam attack ala crypt bolt, because i am a big fan of a magic blast

[prisma sun]

Eclipse charms i think should be esoteric gap coverers

Especially because they are also how you do Godblooded

[winged swallow]

hmmyes

there are some exceptions but they should probably remain that

[prisma sun]

Like they should in a weird way let someone do a very useful thing

Its not simple but if no one can do it youre a life saver

Like "I can make any bird strong enough to carry a person in armor for a round"

You are now the "anti fall damage guy"

[winged swallow]

lol

[bleak hazel]

as far as I know there is precisely one eclipse charm that is purely a very efficient way to do X

others tend to be a bit odd

like Pattern Venom, I love Pattern Venom

[velvet raft]

The aggravated damage charm that a forest witch has?

[winged swallow]

Aura-Reading Technique is also like

pretty straightforward

[bleak hazel]

Kiran Staghelm's defence charm from Adversaries

nothing flashy, but a very mote positive defence compared to Excellencies

[winged swallow]

woah damn

[bleak hazel]

whip your hair back and forth to avoid the daiklaive

[velvet raft]

Hypothetically, I agree that eclipse charms as deeply weird things is good! But if the goal here is to give players and STs the kinds of stuff they could say any given spirit has, that may change things.

[bleak hazel]

sticking this on my Abyssal actually, he needs a good defence package for his squishy squishy Moonshadow body

[velvet raft]

And yeah, that's wild.

[bleak hazel]

it's also surprise hardness, admittedly very little

if someone ever makes an exactly 4 dice decisive you get to laugh

[velvet raft]

Just the parry and soak are good, though.

I think low-hardness effects do serve the purpose of making it harder to just throw decisives constantly, fwiw.

[bleak hazel]

base init is 3, and a couple of motes on E1 damage boosting will get you above 4 dice, so small hardness will not stop anyone leaning into that strategy

but it does turn off anima flux, which is nice

Goran also has this, which is neat if you're not big enough into Athletics to get regular flight by E4

[velvet raft]

There's that one god-blooded gangster who has a bunch of weirdly excellent E1 eclipse charms.

Including the one that's a ... 2e perfect social defense for some reason.

[bleak hazel]

Wings of the Gale might actually be a more efficient flying package than On Wings of Night, actually

OWON costs less to maintain and gives other benefits, but it's the same price and Simple, and it doesn't launch you unless you pay an extra 7 motes and make a Disengage roll, even if the launch is much better if you do get it

definitely not a bad grab

[bleak hazel]

Trying to figure out what's the most effective way to permanently enhance the spirit horses pulling Oedanol's Wheel so I can unlock the evocation necessary to drag Thorns into Malfeas

I think it might be Spirit Shape Companion, which would allow both to take human form and be material by default

[tulip folio]

Turn a demon into a horse

[bleak hazel]

Elder Journeys plots destruction of Gem, accidentally makes umamusume real

[bleak hazel]

The unlock requirement is "purchase or use a charm to permanently enhance the Lumenir" so unfortunately I cannot replace the horses

[tulip folio]

Awww

[light olive]

Hmm. For the OC yozi I came up with. Their will probably never be a charm list.

But what about a social charm that gets people to look over past wrongs

[prisma sun]

which splat is doing this

also are you getting the people in Thorns out first

[tulip folio]

If Spirit Shape Companion is the comparison (And Misc is saying the words) it's likely Sids.

[prisma sun]

Actually, I don't think you CAN use spirit-shape companion on them

[tulip folio]

It's a bit of a weird area of 'Are spirit animals still animals'

[prisma sun]

well no, I just don't think they count as familiars

since they're artifacts

[tulip folio]

That's fair. I also think the intent is likely no on the 'are they animals' front, as they don't allow lunars to turn into Cloud Shark and that's a Very Slightly Magical Shark.

With the horses from the chariot being a lot weirder/magical than that.

[tulip folio]

Pondering a last couple of minor things for this Jadeborn variant. Do you think a charm that lets you treat something that would cause you to gain Divergence (Their Limit) as an Unacceptable Order would be a good mental defence? It covers a specific area/won't apply against all social effects but it's also a pretty broad one at times.

So it would stop things that would break her word, help a COD or kill/command mortals.

Or I suppose 'go for a walk alone' but that's less of a useful factor 😛

It's sorta a replacement for Infinite Clarity Consciousness Simulation

Which is a mental defence that hooks into their version of limit

ICCS is more Generally Useful as it requires the other guy find the weak point but if they can find the weak point, you're kinda shit out of luck.

While the Jadeborn version has no weak point but is less generally useful.

[coral wraith]

Make sure you include the definition of creature of darkness in this if you do reference them heavily in the way you're doing

Also this kinda cuts Jadeborn off from being in parties containing Abyssals or Infernals in ways Exalts aren't shut out

[tulip folio]

Yeah, it's a bit tricky as this is a much cut down version of the 2e version. Which was much worse.

But it's still a bit on the painful end.

[tulip folio]

The 2e one was just cruel

If an Abyssal asked you to craft him a daiklaive you'd gain 1 per week of refusal or 4 if you said yes.

[coral wraith]

[tulip folio]

Oh and the 2e one didn't have any way to clear it beyond 'spend a month underground, as long as you gained no points during that month'

So a Jadeborn who was at 6 limit needed to Fuck Off for the next half a year

Jadeborn are something I really like but christ 2e hated them nearly as much as it hated Dragonblooded.

[tulip folio]

But yeah, not 100% sure how to square that circle without also throwing out 'the sun slaps your hand if you help an actually trying to end creation one' 😛

That said: I am looking at an option that actually swaps out their limit chart for a different one.

As they do have something like that in fluff.

[coral wraith]

Imo, adding some discretion in the effect, like if you aid them in a defilement of Creation or something, might help

[tulip folio]

Void Seers are Jadeborn who connected to the Loom of Fate. Which is great! You know, in theory. When they were originally designed.

[coral wraith]

cause as-is this even applies to summoned Demons, who have explicit sidebars in the core book of all places saying "summoning Demons doesn't damn you automagically! don't worry! it's fine!"

[tulip folio]

Unfortunately running Loom.exe requires at least 16gb of ram and the average jadeborn got knocked down to 512mb of ram 😛

So Void Seers don't do well mentally

So they've sorta traded one set of issues for another.

[coral wraith]

oof

rough gig

[tulip folio]

Yep. So I think I might give 2 limit gain options. One for 'Jadeborn working as normal' and one for 'Oh, this one jailbroke his soul'

I think the Void Seer one will be more 'I must have knowledge'.

2e Void Seers were just kinda...evil...but that's also kinda boring when their issue is Sensory Overload.

Make the Big Divergence Gain 'If you cause information to be permanently lost to creation or refuse an opportunity to learn an important piece of lore'

They Must Have Forbidden Lore. 😛

Still going a bit Mad Sorcerer but less 'Oh yeah, Void Seers are Just Assholes'

[tulip folio]

Gaining Divergence
While a Void Seer is normally free of the Geas imposed upon her people by the Sun, the shattering of per people leaves her much less able to handle the sheer amount of information her people once easily swam through. This instability leaves gaps in moments of imbalance for the curse to lash out at her. 

She gains limit equal to her successes under the following circumstances:

-When she causes knowledge to be lost to creation, even unintentionally, or she refuses a chance to learn long-forgotten lore she rolls three dice.
-If she breaks her word or abandons a plan, even if it is no longer viable, she rolls 2 dice.
-For each Scene spent in places of great noise and sensory overload, she rolls 1 die. During downtime, she roll 1 die per week spent this way.

Each of these triggers can only occur once per scene.

Divergence for void seers!

[bleak hazel]

They have a carve-out such that they automatically qualify as familiars for Sids, so it works in this situation

I'm just trying to figure out if there's any decent permanent augments you could use to unlock that one other than SSC

[fierce star]

hear me out misc

witch-beast pact

[velvet raft]

Do we think First Age Solars put orichalcum in their food

[winged swallow]

orichalcum leaf on the ice cream

[velvet raft]

Ye

[winged swallow]

orichalcum flecks in liquor

[velvet raft]

You're gettin' it.

Just imagine First Age Solars like modern billionaires.

-_-

I think I may have hurt myself with that thought.

[winged swallow]

i mean

yeah

i can see it

if billionaires were also fucken demigods

at least nowadays you get Usually Humble Demigods

hm

how do we feel abt Bureaucracy as Autumn

[limpid badge]

arranging all things for the harvest?

[velvet raft]

And/or preparing for winter?

[errant knot]

Prepare the festivals

[winged swallow]

hm

what season for solar craft...

[tulip folio]

Spring, as it's returned to the world and the revival of lost work?

[prisma sun]

Autumn, as you must shore up your home for the coming winter?

[winged swallow]

hm, i like autumn here

but also the first age is obviously a Big Thing for solars

i just want the focus in the splat to be like

"the past is gone and we fucked it up, we have to look to the future now"

taking the lessons of the past, and applying them to building the future and surviving the great winter that is the age of sorrows

[bleak hazel]

Craft is a shoe-in for spring

[winged swallow]

📝

[prisma sun]

What is your current line up

[winged swallow]

uhhhhhhhhhh

[prisma sun]

considering you do have to keep things equal

[winged swallow]

lemme check

Archery (Discipline/Winter)
Brawl/MA (Courage/Summer)
Melee (Justice/Calibration)
Thrown (Loyalty/Autumn)
War (Compassion/Spring)```

[prisma sun]

Oh

I forgot Calibration was a season

[winged swallow]

hang on

oh, yeah

i threw that in because i think it's interesting AND because i needed a fifth season

Craft (Courage/Spring)

NIGHT:
Athletics (Justice/Spring)
Awareness (Compassion/Summer)

ECLIPSE:
Bureaucracy (Courage/Autumn)```

other than that, nothing is set

[winged swallow]

for thrown it was a toss-up between loyalty and wonder, and i couldn't tell which fit best

but i liked loyalty for a warrior

[tulip folio]

Makes sense.

Void Seers
Void seers are those who have attempted to regain the lost capabilities of their kin. They reach out to the world around them, not merely reading local dragon lines but connecting to the very loom of fate. This however, pushes them far beyond what the solars of the first age reduced them to. The constant sensory overload and data they can barely comprehend leaves them mentally off-balance, sorting through a barrage of information that would have taxed them even back during the primordial war. However, some would claim that the loss is well worth a chance to reclaim some of the independence of their lost selves.

Tried to make Void Seers for Jadeborn less 'Oh and then there's This Asshole, who became innately evil because he tried to reach beyond what the solars allow Jadeborn to be'. Inspired by the talk of them being linked to the Loom of Fate, I pushed it more towards my own experiences with being autistic and how sensory overload is just...a lot...

[winged swallow]

pretty sick

[fierce star]

Nice

[tulip folio]

The intent is basicly if you take the Void Seer related background/sorcerous initiation, you can optionally swap your usual limit gain sources for the Void Seer ones. On a fluff level: It lets void seers be more interesting than just Bad Jadeborn/Lets you have some variety in them and on a mechanical level it lets you use Jadeborn in games that might be hard to use them in, if you're using the standard limit gain.

[bleak hazel]

I am not too familiar with how 2e Jadeborn worked, but these are cool anyway

[tulip folio]

2e Void Seers accessed the Loom of Fate and then just...became compassion 0.

Which never made a lot of sense.

[bleak hazel]

does this mean that if a Sid or Getimian presses a bunch of buttons around the new Void Seers they have a Bad Time?

(narratively, anyway)

[tulip folio]

100%. They used to be able to handle this on a reasonable level but find it hard to comprehend now.

Most people look at Sid Nonsense and go 'I have no clue what happened', a Void Seer looks at it and goes 'I almost get what happened and it hurts'

The way I described it yesterday is that Loom.exe requires at least 16gb of ram

And they're these days running on like...3-6gb of ram

[bleak hazel]

yesterday I was talking about the silly chariot that lets you jump cities to Malfeas with NRS in the Exalted discord and incidentally made a comment that fits well with this

[tulip folio]

Hahahah

[bleak hazel]

With a bit of maths and some finessing of the regen and story duration rules we figured out that if you timed it just right you could drag a city into Malfeas, grab another one and drag it out again, but there's no guarantee you'd end up where you wanted to put your lump of Malfeas rock when you got out of Cece and we had no idea what happened to the demons in it when you did that.

presumably they all just get shunted off as you're leaving

[tulip folio]

It would also be pretty hellish with the 'how long it takes to get in/out of malfeas' as you'd need to drag it for 5 days through the desert

No matter how fast you normally go

[bleak hazel]

this is kind of odd actually, because NRS does one die of bashing damage every hour, and healing a -0 level filled with bashing takes.... two hours while active

so if you're lucky you can power through with Ox-Body

on average you'll have time to regen, but if it ever gets to -1s you're fucked

[tulip folio]

...here's an odd pondering - Jadeborn Void Seers would theoretically be able to help sids with Prophesy.

They can't make them.

But they'd likely fall under the 'supernatural beings who's powers are thematically related to the prophesy' for a Cooperation Bonus.

[bleak hazel]

helps if the E5 Sidereal doing this also has the Resistance capstone, you can task-bind yourself to this, remove your name and march in a straight line through the desert for five days in and five days out, regenerating at 15+ times the normal rate to ignore the bashing damage

which is kind of fun, thematically

you turn yourself something very like a summoned and task-bound demon to haul Creation into hell and vice versa

Elder Journeys things

[bleak hazel]

oh this is very nice, I've always wondered what kind of beings could get you that bonus

I suppose the default is "local spirit court for the place you're casting on" but having more generic minor prophets is cool

[tulip folio]

They don't get the ability to make prophesies as I'm really not letting them Step On Sid Toes but they do get a bit of a 'hey loom, what happen?' in the Sorcerous Initiation stuff for void seers.

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

Though it's more 'Hey Loom, what Needs Doing' than 'Make Loom Do What I Want'

[bleak hazel]

I actually ended up sticking a fate-flavoured version of that on one of my Sids, the Autobot book has many fun sorcery things

this one would probably work out of the box, no reflavouring required

actually could you post the rest of the initiation?

Redsid will not be changing his first ritual because his stupid sorcerous tome homework from Raksi's Tutelage is part of his core deal but I'm not sure what his second one will be

[tulip folio]

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

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

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

One More Needed:

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

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

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

It's very based off the Whispers-based initiation

As Whispers was a good basis for 'Oh, you've got some hostile things running about your brain'

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

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

[bleak hazel]

Geomantic Beacon I very much like

the one level of agg damage is another case of "do this before bed", which is always funny, but I like any initiation that provides you a cool intro scene for when the TV show cuts to your character

Crimson Rain, unsuprisingly, has the "bathing in blood" one and the "carving an effigy" one

[prisma sun]

Y'know

I should make a Northern guy

[bleak hazel]

but the Redsid meditating inside a big olympic cauldron inside his heavenly doom fortress is pretty stylish

[prisma sun]

Hrrmmmm

Do I make a Northern Solar

[dense verge]

The Bull of the Norther

[bleak hazel]

throw yet more solars at the bull's empire

Kill Bull Volume 2

[wise ocean]

Kill Bull: Seeing Red

[prisma sun]

"Well clearly the Bull isn't worthy of being King if he's dying to poison"

[dense verge]

Bull of the I Walked Like A Mile Or So North

[bleak hazel]

apparently when The Realm dropped several people could not understand that he's been hit by some fancy artifact capstone evocation and were like "why doesn't the Realm use this magic anti-Solar poison against everyone, this is clearly bullshit"

the aftermath of Futile Blood is very fun, one of my favourite bits of setting

[dense verge]

The Solar Poison, for Solars, the poison specifically for Solars. Solar Poison.

[bleak hazel]

both imperial armies just kind of staggering home with half their shit wrecked

[bleak hazel]

silly Realm, you don't need that, you need the disease that kills you for being too enlightened and in-tune with the universe

I love white sun fever because you can use it to bully Elder Exalts and you can catch it from refusing to touch grass

kills exalts, too, but not mortals

[tulip folio]

'Is he in tune with the universe, able to see things we can't...or is he just hallucinating his ass off?'

[bleak hazel]

got too close to Buddha Nature, caught the nerd disease that keeps you in samsara

[prisma sun]

Do I make a Dawn though

I already made a Full Moon

I could make a Viking Zenith

[tulip folio]

I will freely admit; I see white sun fever as the guy ascending from Lower Decks.

[prisma sun]

Wait which ones are the Abyssal Zenith

[tulip folio]

Midnight

[prisma sun]

Okay then it's not the one I used for my Abyssal

Yeah

Zenith Viking

[tulip folio]

I've been attacked by friends over the Jadeborn tinkering.

'Iki, you're doing up Tuatha with Trains. You're a stereotype of yourself'

[tulip folio]

Here's an odd pondering: With various types of Influence Roll (Instill, Inspire, Threaten etc) do you think they're all Equally Valuable Actions? Or do you think some of them rank higher than others? Basicly pondering for Anima abilities and if giving each caste one of these skills they get a bonus on would be 'roughly equal'.

[coral wraith]

I feel like they're roughly equal yeah

[tulip folio]

nods
Okay, then my pondering is:

Worker - Read Intentions (They are quiet and observant, though they don't speak often)
Soldier - Threaten (They are the weapons of Autothon and Cold Iron in their souls)
Artisan - Instil (They have the charm of the old Fae)

Does that seem interesting/fit the general vibe?

Cold Iron Soul (5m; Supplemental; Instant): The Jadeborn adds (higher of Essence or 3) non-Charm dice on a threaten roll. Once per day, she can retry a failed threaten roll without resetting it.

[tulip folio]

Hmm...the third anima ability for Artisans and Workers is tricky. I have a pondering for Artisans to make it not just 'You make artifact' but more 'You are are a designer of wonder'.

Right now they're set up as:

-Defensive Ability (Free At Bonfire)
-Social Ability
-Third ability focused on their role.

[bleak hazel]

I find myself throwing more Instills than anything else but I think that's mostly a skill issue

I am not totally used to the Ex3 social system yet, I think I need to play characters aimed at different parts of it

[next delta]

Instill seems the most straightforward. Inspire seems harder to use and threaten is going to typecast the person quite a bit I think?

[winged swallow]

OG Harrow was kind of a threaten master, and probably would have only gotten stronger at it if i’d taken her down presence a bit more

[winged swallow]

anyone got any cool mythic feats of archery they wanna suggest for the archery tree

[coral wraith]

Arc the shot to hit someone you can't see

[bleak hazel]

Odysseus shoots the bow through the holes in a dozen axes, or however many it was

mechanically, chained disarm gambit - you disarm someone, if that works you roll to disarm another guy next to him, repeat (possibly with a cap of [essence] extra disarms or something)

[winged swallow]

📝

i can pretty easily work that in with the ability themes too

[bleak hazel]

or you can fire it at a battlegroup and relieve a hundred men of their swords in a tangle of falling bodies without hurting any of them

[fierce star]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arash when I think of solar-tier archery feats, the legend of Arash always comes to mind.

(thanks fate!)

[bleak hazel]

also Hou Yi and like half the Mahabharata

[winged swallow]

yes but hou yi shot the suns

[bleak hazel]

although most of those godly weapons are more like nuclear weapons that happen to be bow-shaped

[winged swallow]

hmm

[bleak hazel]

Hou Yi also spends a lot of time hunting various behemoths

give 'em the legendary-size-ignoring arrow or something

[winged swallow]

oh okay

[bleak hazel]

also works for Bard the Bowman

I still think you should have a "shoot the sun, change the time of day" thing but I'm not sure what you'd actually use it to do

Abyssals get a lot more out of "boom, eternal night, go my minions"

[winged swallow]

yeah that

yeah

well

maybe we could mirror that

infuse an arrow with sunlight, light up the night

daytime… 2!

[bleak hazel]

could do it as "fire an arrow in such an arc that it spans the heavens and makes it light for the duration of its path" rather than "shoot the sun"

just so it's not quite so obviously the same charm

[winged swallow]

mhm mhm

[bleak hazel]

also lets your E5 Solar Archer be so cool that people whisper about the golden comet etc. etc.

[winged swallow]

TRUE

[velvet raft]

Not offhand but it may be worth mentioning that Indian mythology goes hard with crazy feats of archery.

"My arrow is a nuke" kind of stuff.

Something that might be worth looking at that appears both IRL and in multiple mythologies is archery as a feat of superhuman strength and of authority.

Especially the stringing of the bow.

The stringing of Odysseus's bow is proof of his identity as the king of Ithaca. In the Ramayana, Rama manages to string Shiva's bow, and Rama's wife Sita has to talk Shiva down from killing her husband right then and there for daring to do so. In feudal Japan, the power of a bow was sometimes described in how many men were required to string it.

In fiction, there is of course Bard shooting Smaug. Finding a weakspot is one part of that, but I think the way he talks about and to the black arrow is also worth mentioning.

"Arrow!" said the bowman. "Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"
Might be something worth considering for Craft, if not for Archery.

Totemically invoking a well-loved object seems a bit different than evocations conventionally.

[prisma sun]

Shooting Birds/Flies
Shooting Projectiles out of the air
Hitting your own projectile
Supreme distance shooting
Legolas surfing

[winged swallow]

Supreme Distance Shooting will DEFINITELY be in here, i promise you that

shooting projectiles is interesting to me

a counterattack for archery..?

also

legolas surfing?

[graceful geode]

Look up that Scandinavian archer

He can shoot arrows out of the air

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/legolas-sliding-the-lord-of-the-rings-shield-surf-gif-11694557

thank you gif maker for adding # Swag

so we know

[winged swallow]

lmao

[prisma sun]

Hmmmm what else

[coral wraith]

#swag

[prisma sun]

I was gonna say "be able to manipulate things at a distance by shooting them the right way" but I think that should be thrown

[winged swallow]

wild that phantom arrow technique was like "yeah you can just hock 4 nc dice on to this attack with defining intimacy juice, but you can't use it again until you spend significant effort remembering how you love meemaw or how much you love being a little hater"

question for the audience relating to the abyssal mirror, Relic Arrow Method

[prisma sun]

Oh

"Shoot arrow so hard that the wind pressure does something"

[winged swallow]

RAM has a Whispers rider that lets you convert the non-Charm dice from it into non-Charm successes

[winged swallow]

that's kinda fire actually, noted

[winged swallow]

should we have some sort of similar thing on the solar equivalent, or should we just. Not Do That.

obviously Solars don't really have an equivalent merit

or, well. they could, but i don't know what it would be and i don't think we should mirror that much

maybe something to do with their Ambition...

hmmm

[tulip folio]

Entertainingly, I did make one that's a counterpart (To the point of referring to it) based on basicly the most common 2e Solar background but also: I don't think it's really part of the Solar Theming. XD

[winged swallow]

past lives play a part in some of the solar themeing

[prisma sun]

Hrmmmmm

Oh, rain of arrows

https://tenor.com/view/arrows-invisible-disappear-jet-li-hero-gif-15324333

gotta be able to

[bleak hazel]

shooting arrows out of the air is Dragonfly Finds Mate, the iconic Deeb Archery charm, so I might go slightly easy on that in the interest of leaving them their one cool trick, but you absolutely want the rest

[prisma sun]

Parry with arrows

ez pz

[winged swallow]

hmmm

numbers fuckstein, how would that affect game balance

[bleak hazel]

Saves you dots on dodge I guess, but you have no parry charms because they're all ability specific, so you'd basically just have raw Def 6/7 max and an Excellency

[tulip folio]

It would be really good if a lunar or alchemcial could do it.

As they're attribute-based

[bleak hazel]

Might be a nice E1 tidbit

[tulip folio]

But less so for solars

[bleak hazel]

I'd suggest reflexive Defend Other with arrows if D.O. wasn't jank

Possibly at reduced strength

[tulip folio]

Honestly, most of the time I see an archer with parry they've just got some Brawl and kick arrows from the air. XD

[winged swallow]

simple charm ranged defend other? or reflexive but it only lasts a tick or something instead of lingering so long as you're in range

the former really is just pay to use defend other normally, but at range

the problem is that you then can't redirect the attack on to the other-defender

seems more like a ranged counterattack on someone else's behalf?

and if you beat their successes or something, you can stop the attack? idk

[bleak hazel]

That's called a clash

[winged swallow]

i was unsure

[tulip folio]

Silly pondering: Let you covering fire an area and have it...provide cover. XD

[bleak hazel]

Oh yeah you definitely want a suppressing fire charm

[tulip folio]

You're making the shots more difficult without getting into a full defend other effect

[bleak hazel]

something that sucks less than Distract gambits

[tulip folio]

I like distract conceptually.

[bleak hazel]

It is unfortunately legendarily bad

[tulip folio]

Now I'm pondering what it would want to make it better.

[winged swallow]

i'll be honest, i am staying away from "fire a bajillion arrows really quickly" stuff on archery because, to me, it clashes with the stuff i want archery to do

i understand people may disagree with this

[bleak hazel]

Write a new gambit that does it better, all the distract buff charms in Sid Archery and Solar Thrown are just depressing

[winged swallow]

what is the problem with distract anyway

although, i say this

but idek what distract does now

[bleak hazel]

Hang on, let me get back to my PC

[winged swallow]

oh boy

This'll Be Good

[tulip folio]

I'm guessing 'the cost is too high for transfering init at a net loss'

As a gambit, it costs some init and is your entire turn.

And it just transfers init, rather than making any

[coral wraith]

numbers fuckstein on the job

[bleak hazel]

so yeah, Distract works as follows:

Hit with decisive pool, because gambit
Spend 4-6 init, make an init roll at diff 3-5 respectively that you might fluff, in which case you do nothing
Ally gets the 4-6 init you lost, but only if they decisive the same guy on their next turn

note that to reliably make a diff 4 gambit roll, your average distract, you need over 10 init

if you have over 10 init, and you can hit a man with your decisive attack dice pool in order to trigger the gambit in the first place, JUST HIT HIM

so you spend your whole turn and possibly a bunch of motes making a gambit that leaves the team at the same init it started at, except now a large chunk of it is on a clock and your best striker (presumably) has to decisive next turn or lose it

it is almost never worth it over just withering with a higher dice pool, doing a small decisive or even just going for a cheeky grapple in the hope of getting in a savage, even if they wreck you on the control roll you still get one turn of grappling

[fierce star]

hot take certain gambits shouldn't be decisives

(this is not a hot take)

[bleak hazel]

the intended purpose is "allow weaker combatants to pass their init over to stronger combatants, so they can use it", but it categorically fails at that purpose because high-difficulty gambits are often outright win conditions available only to people who are serious Fite Contenders to begin with

deebs just have a charm that lets them give init to their friends straight up, it's so much better

[winged swallow]

dragon-blood W

[tulip folio]

My hot take is that distract should be a non-gambit action. Like just let them distract people with social skills instead of weapon.

A Social Primary Guy should be better at distract than Invincible Sword Princess and her fucktonnes of decisive attack dice

[winged swallow]

sigh

adds this to my projects list

[tulip folio]

Let me grab something from a different game for my thoughts.

[bleak hazel]

I dislike Exalted: Essence's Build Power system for a few reasons, but its heart is in the right place for this kind of thing

[tulip folio]

Malifaux has a few actions that can be taken for less combat-happy characters to help combat characters or to give themselves an edge in a situation where 'social skills' rarely matter so much.

And I lean a bit more towards stuff like this when it comes to distract

[fierce star]

impose and trick are really fun

if the character I was playing in a malifaux game wasn't built expressly to walk menacingly at people and die them to death I'd use them more lmao

[tulip folio]

I think if I was to rewrite distract, I'd make it a social skill vs guile action.

It doesn't matter how good you are at sword

It matters how good you are at not going 'Huh, wha?' when someone messes with you

[winged swallow]

wouldn't that be vs resolve then?

[tulip folio]

It could be, yeah. Guile sees less use in the game so I was leaning a hair that way but resolve would also be very fitting.

[winged swallow]

Resolve is the "Resist Being Influenced" static value, is all

you are correct though, Guile is underused but

well, that is a symptom of it being the "hide your feelings" SV

[prisma sun]

Oh

"Shoot arrows into terrain to serve as stairs"

[bleak hazel]

I would not make Distract bypass the combat defence stats purely because the Social Combat stuff is already really good, and you don't really want the socialites to be able to floor combat builds

resolve and guile-targeting attacks are quite highly priced

[tulip folio]

...and now I'm imagine a swording charm that lets you hit vs guile (At a cost obviously) as you just read every single move the other guy is going to do.

[bleak hazel]

The Spear Not Held, sidereal melee

[tulip folio]

There we go

[bleak hazel]

it's the Hero battle-in-the-mind scene

[winged swallow]

damn

i was gonna say "woah that could be neat for my archery tree!"

but i'm not gonna steal the sidereals' thunder lol

[spring lynx]

sherlocking it (the rdj sherlock)

[bleak hazel]

attack vs guile is in a few places

just don't make it a long-ranged soakbuster and you're not stepping too hard on the deal

[tulip folio]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Y8LtMO7ZYys Yeah, I was 100% thinking of this scene.

[winged swallow]

how so

if you tell me specifically how to avoid breaking shit, i will adhere to that lol

although if long-range is gonna be a problem

i might just not do it

[tulip folio]

iirc, the spear not held basicly punches through most defenses as well as hitting vs guile.

[winged swallow]

uber-long range is kinda the direction i wanted to take archery

[tulip folio]

It's just a 'good news, the beating happened'

[winged swallow]

fair

a (perception + archery) vs guile withering attack

no soak ignoring

and it still uses weapon traits

[tulip folio]

The solar knows if you're going to dodge left or right before you do.

[winged swallow]

Supreme Focus on one target, you are picking up on those subtle motions and expressions that come before a person doing something

semi-related, i'm kinda jazzed abt the reforging now because i feel like i'm really gettin' into the groove of it

[bleak hazel]

shooting at distance is less of a problem than being able to kite at distance, which kinda breaks the combat engine

[winged swallow]

hm

how do i fulfill the long-range hyperfocus sniper fantasy while making it harder to kite

...

hunker down type-shit

Build Sniper's Nest

[tulip folio]

Could go with 'Get bonus until you move'

It makes kiting harder and it gives counterplay

Where if an alchemical nails you with a bean bag round and knocks you back, you lose your focus

[winged swallow]

persnaps, persnaps

[bleak hazel]

aiming normally stops you moving, that's half the point of the aim-at-long mechanic

[winged swallow]

mhm

so tying these charms to aiming, and not permitting "you can move AND aim", cuts down on this i imagine?

like uh

Rapacious Vulture Approach lets you move and aim on the same turn in addition to some other stuff

but tbf, it also rewards moving in closer to your enemy

[bleak hazel]

yeah, Sid Melee allows move-and-aim but only because you can't aim beyond the range of your weapon and you obviously cannot sword at long

[winged swallow]

yeah

[fierce star]

I feel like moving towards is fine, mechanically

[winged swallow]

yeah that's what i was saying w/ regards to RVA

move and aim a little fraught, but the fact it gives you a wp cost waive if you move towards your target (and also use the reflexive aim on decisive charm too)

is a nice incentive

even though you can still happily move away from targets with it

[tulip folio]

What's people's thoughts on Chthonic Gateway for Abyssals? It looks like a pretty fun 'get out of jail free card' for Daybreaks, though if you've got a circle with you I can't see it getting a tonne of use when you go 'wow, this fight seems hard, peace' and just vanish.

[winged swallow]

same can be said for the twilight power that does basically the same thing. i think it's.. got something to it if you're alone? idk

i'm kinda waggles hand on it

[tulip folio]

I'm kinda tempted to tinker with a variant of it for one of my projects that has more investment to get going but can take friends with you.

So it's more 'we have an excape tool' than 'I can abandon my friends'

[winged swallow]

hm

unsure if that's something to make an anima power

[tulip folio]

...I'm realizing that a better version if it already exists. XD

[winged swallow]

?

[tulip folio]

Greater Sign of Mercury.

[winged swallow]

that one celestial circle spell?

oh

that too ig

Sidereals have a couple tricks for "getting my buddies outta danger"

like the Avoidance rider that uses that one charm that lets you reflexively defend other with evasion

[tulip folio]

Greater Sign of Mercury (20m, 1wp; Simple; Instant or Until next turn): Once per story, the Harbinger may make Mercury’s greater sign, shining golden in the sky. She transports herself, her Circlemates, and up to (Essence ×2) others to anywhere she’s familiar with in Creation or Heaven. Rolls she makes to overcome wards against such travel gain −2 target number. In combat, this doesn’t occur until the start of her next turn after using this power. Characters she brings with her must remain within long range until this is completed. If she moves or is moved before then, this power fails, refunding its cost and resetting it.

As it's basicly just 'Hey, what if this was 10 extra motes but brought friends, you could control where it went and was generally cooler'

XD

[winged swallow]

it also is more thematically in line

that sure is a Journey

[tulip folio]

Yep.

I'm pondering things for Jadeborn Castes and was pondering having the Big Worker Trick being 'Sink into the earth, reappear elsewhere' as they've got the biggest focus on unworked material/crafting paths.

[winged swallow]

i might replace that twilight anima power tbh

i'm sure i can do something better

[bleak hazel]

GSOM is like the mobility button, that's kind of the entire thing

I personally quite like the Twilight/Daybreak spread apart from the random hardness

[winged swallow]

that was for the bin also

[bleak hazel]

free nerd excellency and get-out-of-jail-free cards very nice

although I think the Twilight one has random spirit stuff instead

[winged swallow]

you can bind a spirit yeah

[tulip folio]

Twisted Genius Inspiration is nice.

[winged swallow]

i like that nerd excellency

it fits

[tulip folio]

Just 'hey, have a grab bag of good things you can have'

[winged swallow]

it is appropriate to Daybreak/Twilight

[tulip folio]

Need necromantic motes? Sure! Need willpower? Sure! Need free excellency? Sure!

It's just versatile

[winged swallow]

Essence-Flensing Insight is also thematically neat

[tulip folio]

Sid + Alch Cheerleader Squad would be terrifying

'Greater Sign of Mars + Refracted Glory' = 'oh god, everyone's got so much free init'

[winged swallow]

kinda wanna try coming up with one-word sobriquets for the solar castes

well

all of them save the dawn, since they have one

[tulip folio]

Yeah, I'm thinking the worker big trick will be a suitably nerfed (but cheaper) version of mercury. It's not as beefy but it's also not '20 motes' expensive.

'Walk the Dragon Lines'. You sink into the earth and travel along the leylines a few miles.

[bleak hazel]

the Immaculates have assigned them all slurs already, for what it's worth

[winged swallow]

yes but those are hardly the fit for charms that are supposed to make you feel cool and heroic

[bleak hazel]

which is one of the funnier sidebars in core

[tulip folio]

...I'm now imagining an abyssal or infernal getting called the solar slur and getting offended

[tulip folio]

Luminary for Twilights.

[winged swallow]

yeah i. find it hard to argue against that

i guess Nights have one too but like

it's literally the same as the Dawn one

one letter has been changed

Lightbringer vs Nightbringer

me rn https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1161699000836165714/1395498921941274634/image.png?ex=68853726&is=6883e5a6&hm=67cf0e8ea89e97c94a00ef46f3872f7c71f11a4365dd190974fcc79551485821&=

in any case, i'll worry about a new sobriquet when i wake up

i been workin' on the reforging for like 5 hours now

though, iki, if you don't mind: i might heavily crib that whispers-alike merit you talked about/wrote for some kinda past life thingus

[tulip folio]

About that: It is past lives. XD

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

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

Well, it's not just past lives.

It's a broader 'you've got other times stuck in your head'

Which could be past lives or it could be fucking about with temporal magic or something

[dense verge]

lightman, fighter of the nightmman

[winged swallow]

oh okay

[tulip folio]

'Watchmen', maybe? Those who guard during the night.

[winged swallow]

i was probably gonna change it to just be about past lives lol, but it works

[winged swallow]

hm, maybe

[tulip folio]

Yeah, this is for my Jadeborn project so I sorta tailored it more about the Jadeborn experiance with it

Just with some 'oh yeah, you could also use it for X'

[winged swallow]

real

[tulip folio]

I love how this image has become a thing. XD

Walk the Dragon Lines (10m, 1wp; Simple; Instant or Until next turn): The Worker sinks within the earth, traveling along the leylines of creation before remerging from the earth. She transports herself, her Circlemates, and up to (Essence ×2) others to anywhere she's aware of within (Essence x5 miles). In combat, this doesn’t occur until the start of her next turn after using this power. Characters she brings with her must remain within long range until this is completed. If she moves or is moved before then, this power fails, refunding its cost and resetting it. 

Walk the Dragon Lines can only transport people to or from places with direct contact with the earth. If within a cage of steel or on the deck of an airship, this anima power cannot be used.

Degraded but cheaper version of Mercury Sign for Enlightened Workers.

[bleak hazel]

This is more the Twilight power with group movement capability, GSOM is just so nuts in the number of places you can suddenly pop into it almost doesn't compare

Easily my favourite Greater Sign and most of them are pretty spicy

Party movement means it probably beats out the Daybreaks but meh, they'll live

worst case scenario limit it to people in Close of you

[tulip folio]

Yeah, knocking down to Close makes sense.

Sign of Mars looks fucking terrifying though it does sorta lock you into wits.

But then, you're battles and it's the 'get join battle' stat

So I guess no mars sid is gunna suck at wits

The Alch one in comparison is a lot cheaper but much less beefy than Mars.

But it's also reflexive instead of taking an action and restocks motes, not just init

And you can't really overstate 'didn't cost 20 motes' as a factor. XD

[winged swallow]

aurora rly saw the adamant alchemicals and was like

"that's pretty neat, lemme give it a try"

[tulip folio]

It is actually for the Adamant Alchemicals, so I imagine it's directly inspired by the themes of Aurora, yeah

[winged swallow]

well chronologically it would be the other way around, since autochthon made alchemicals to show how exaltation worked iirc

and then the incarna started makin em

"check this shit out"
"oh woah, what the fuck? that's rad as hell"

[tulip folio]

fair

[winged swallow]

first age sol with a cigarette in hand thinks back to that moment as he watches the games of divinity

[fierce star]

It's kind of implied ins ome of the modern alchemical fluff that it went both ways, the alchemicals are not outright stated to be prototypes and sol is noted in... I think core? as figuring out that exaltation is possible, so like

the basic timeline seems to be 'sol decides to rebel/needs a weapon, figures out exaltation but can't make them work -> gathers allies who are as smart as or smarter than he is -> they tinker together until autochthon figures out the process -> VIVE LE REVOLUTION -> time to play world of warcrack'

[tulip folio]

...hmm...I wonder how you'd price a charm that lets you trick people about 'who's casting the spell'. It doesn't give more range or let you affect people you wouldn't normally affect but lets you trick people into thinking someone else is the sorcerer who threw out that obsidion butterflies.

My thoughts is 100%:

Lunar: "No, no. I'm not the sorcerer. I'm just the familiar~"

[bleak hazel]

I'm not entirely sure how you'd model that but presumably the price can take notes from Birdsong Over Blades, the "oh I just tapped him" White Veil move

[tulip folio]

That makes sense, yeah.

I was thinking a 'when you do a spell, people can make an awarness opposing your guile. Those who fail think the spellcaster was a character of your choice in short range' or something.

[bleak hazel]

OK, let's milk this for all it can provide:
We need:
One E5 Battles Sidereal, w/ Soulfire Shaper Form and a max (Wits + War) pool, maybe even a giant banner for exceptional equipment if we want to be silly about it. Also max Lore and max Occult.
One E5 Adamant Alch

• Everyone Joins Battle as hard as possible, both of them get about 14-15 init. Sid spends peripheral motes to stay dim here.
• If Sid has more init, they delay their turn to after the Alchemicals' turn. This also lets them Clash to defend the party on round 1, so no bad thing here unless your enemies are all rocking way more init than that.
• Alchemical does some shit to get up to bonfire, probably won't be that difficult. Pops Inspiring Guidance and Refracted Glory, returning to dim. The Sid is instantly launched to bonfire from dim and can reflexively trigger SFSF + take full benefit from Ways of Exaltation.
• Sidereal takes turn, fires off Lesser Sign of Mars then Greater Sign of Mars, with a 7 mote excellency and +5 non-charm dice from Lesser sign. Rolls 23-24 dice at TN5, getting 16-17 sux on average.

Outcome: The base init of the team is now 10. Everyone besides the Alchemical has gained 21-22 init, +1 defence and resolve, +3 dice on attack and influence rolls and +5 to War rolls, all non-charm, the Alchemical has gained 16-17 init and the def/war buffs.
Ongoing anima powers aren't Committed motes, so the Sid can actually funnel up to 10 of the init gained from GSOM into mote regen with Soulfire Shaper Form, leaving him at merely about 26 init and down about 45% of his mote pool, but with the two best mote efficiency buffs in the game up.

....someone should really get Anys Syn an Alchemical backup dancer

[fierce star]

the adamant caste powers are so good.

[bleak hazel]

easily my favourites set of Alchemical anima powers, they're such good team buffs

and I always like having summons around

also if you're in this situation, you should teach the Sidereal about Moonsilver Alchemicals, because they are dummy good for Exalt Ways

+Anima dice on all Dex and Wits rolls is like all fighting outside a grapple

[tulip folio]

They are. They heavily inspired me setting up the Artisan Caste for Jadeborn as they feel so...D&D 4e Artificer. XD

[fierce star]

adamant caste powers are good enough that even though statistically my alchemical I'm working on would be better off as Moonsilver and thematically could work well as moonsilver or jade I went with adamant because goddamn

[bleak hazel]

GSOM is an odd one because it's so expensive that usually it means you're going to be taking a back seat for much of the battle, but also holy shit everyone has Init 30

[fierce star]

lol

[bleak hazel]

LSOM boosts GSOM if you're a Warlord, which is a bit odd

[tulip folio]

It's also great for 'All the allied battlegroups have Might 2 now, I am going to Rancho Relaxo through this war now'.

https://media.cdn.community.lambdageneration.com/media-images/1722475802028UC3BqBgBPCJDABg4.png?size=large

Redsid having singlehandledly turned the tide of war with a single anima power.

[bleak hazel]

I feel that most redsids are going to hit their giant awesome power that swaps the skybox over to the one from the Radahn boss fight and go "no, actually, I will charge dramatically, because why wouldn't I charge dramatically" but they may be a bit late as the other three members of the circle unleash 30i buffed decisives on whatever's annoyed you

the adamant alch is doing a lot of enabling here, it's kind of a pain to use GSOM + manually take a form in the same fight

you'll reflexively enter SFSF after you pop GSOM but then you roll a lot less dice without actually paying motes for Lesser Sign and base init is only 8

[tulip folio]

On the plus side: Adamant basic bonus works on RiRi's zombies. So RiRi + Responder has kinda disgusting mass combat teams.

[fierce star]

Hell yeah

[tulip folio]

...am I right in that the Ori bonus works just fine with spells?

[bleak hazel]

I'm trying to imagine what Greater Signs refracted through Adamant animas actually look like and I'm imagining that crystal lensing effects kind of balloon the sign right up until it seems to cover half the sky, because that's really cool

the Sid's anima is also now silver and crystalline, so, you know, don't show the sovereigns

[bleak hazel]

yeah, absolutely

Death of Lightning Butterflies

[tulip folio]

In RiRi's Case, the Flesh Sloughing Wave goes from 'dark energy' to 'some weird crackling disintegration field'

[bleak hazel]

the other abyssal in Crimson's circle actually has Flesh-Sloughing Wave and a custom 5-dot that lets her use spells for savaging attacks, which is kind of fucked up honestly

5 foot nothing woman grapples you with telekinetic chains and then you just sort of melt

[tulip folio]

Apostates: "We shall destroy you, autothonian! What can you do to stop us?"
RiRi:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/the-league-of-utter-disaster-chaos-and-insanity/images/1/14/Dalek-Kill.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/420?cb=20130112130900

[bleak hazel]

why are all the girl necromancers tiny

three in a row now

[tulip folio]

This is a lot of why I went Ori for RiRi. That 'I am making a stand for my morals, oh fuck she's got a spell already charged' trick.

[bleak hazel]

oh damn that's nice

great exchange rate too, usually it's 1 for 5

[tulip folio]

Sadly RiRi's intimacy towards food is only minor

So you can't go 'I'll get you a fancy desert' to charge her magic

[fierce star]

My lunar (girl most of the time) necromancer is of average height? But her spirit shape is a carrion bee. So still very small there

[winged swallow]

misc, harrow is 10ft tall

[tulip folio]

The Alchs sadly don't have a lot of magic-related charms.

They've got the absolute basics

[bleak hazel]

I was unaware Harrow had necromancy

[winged swallow]

Harrow is a Shadow Circle Necromancer lol

we even talked about what Shadow control spell she should take

which, at the time, we agreed upon the hundred shade breath

[tulip folio]

Hundred Shade Breath is great.

[bleak hazel]

HSB is nuts, yeah

[tulip folio]

Considering it's an Alch-Only Game where non-alchs activley can't turn up, I should look into some other splats 'do sorcery better' charms, see if I can convince the GM to allow some alch versions of them. XD

[bleak hazel]

I'm surprised they don't have the standard issue ones from Sids/Lunars/Abyssals if you're looking for that

they get tweaked very slightly per splat but not very much

Sid version of Cloaked In Moonfire gives you +1 guile while casting but costs a mote unless you have wizard vibes, Shadow-Hands Evocation is exactly the same. Abyssal CIM gives +1 def and [anima] soak, Abyssal SHE is 1m cheaper.

actually, you do have those

in fact you have slightly shinier versions of, since Parallel Protocol Cores doesn't need Celestial Circle to ignore flurry penalties and Theurgic Essence Capacitor is expensive but gives you a whole bunch more shape sorcery juice with autosux and exploding 10s

there is also a sidebar in the Abyssal book that notes that sorcery-buffing charms boost necromancy the same way unless explicitly stated, so you can use PPC/TEC on Riri's casting

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah that's what I meant when I said they had the basics. They've got the ones that most everyone has.

[bleak hazel]

The four they don't have are Dragon-Sorceror Puissance (+1-3 motes when shaping elemental spells), Five Winds Rainment (spend anima to grant +1 Def and a bit of hardness while casting, but only until you cast the spell, so if you one turn it it does nothing), Cosmos-Rending Fury (E5 lunar tech, cast reflexively on join battle) and Necromancer-Tyrant Puissance (+3 necro motes whenever you shape necro, basically)

All of those are sufficiently splat specific that I think you'd basically be homebrewing new charms entirely

Oh yeah there's also one in MFS that lets you use a bunch of Lunar stuff like stolen shapes and territories as means for Sorcerous Workings, and a worse deeb version of that in Heirs that works on hearthmates and elemental stuff

[winged swallow]

me: i've made a new abyssal
my subconscious: new abyssal or harrow again
me: harrow again

[fierce star]

... Hmm, does bee lunar count as small necromancer girl becuase her spirit shape is like an inch long

[tulip folio]

Pondering a very alchemical-themed extra sorta thing for sorcery.

...actually, how's this seem as a 'yep, that's alchemicals' sorcery thing?

'You can exclude any number of people in your spells from their effects'. Alchemicals are not the best sorcerers in existance but the thing all achemicals are is Concerned About Keeping Mortals Safe'

So an Alchemical can pick up tricks to send Obsidion Butterflies through a tunnel and only hurt the enemies.

[bleak hazel]

seems reasonable

possibly at E3 or something just because at that point you can do stuff like "Cantata but only for people I hate" and that's really damn good

[tulip folio]

Makes sense.

[bleak hazel]

thing I learned today: Solar/Abyssal Dodge evaporates against Obsidian Shards because of Black Shards Fall Like Ice

[tulip folio]

Oh?

[bleak hazel]

BSFLI is (Perception +1) undodgeable decisives, with the usual init split

Solaroid Dodge has dodge undodgeable, but it's Seven Shadow Evasion

[tulip folio]

...oh

[bleak hazel]

so you pop it against the first one, perfect dodge and then it's down for the scene and you get blended

[tulip folio]

They don't have a like 'make things dodgable'

It's their pseudoperfect and that's it.

[bleak hazel]

admittedly, Sidereal Dodge in that situation is rocking Duck Fate, and dodging all of those at 7m each is going to mote tap you, but you can concievably do it

[tulip folio]

The Alch dodge undodgable is a bit weird as it's like 3 charms welded together. XD

Omnisituational Evasive Equation
Cost: Varies; Mins: Dexterity 5, Essence 3
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Uniform
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Precalculated Evasion System
The Alchemical evades harm with clockwork precision, moving into a perfect defensive position calculated by a cluster of adamant nodes around her soulgem.

The Alchemical uses one of the following defenses:
• For four motes, she can dodge an undodgeable attack (but not an ambush).
• For five motes, one Willpower, she doubles her base Evasion against an attack, as long as it’s not undodgeable. She also adds +1 non-Charm Evasion for each installation of Transpuissant Dexterity Upgrade. She can only use this defense once per scene.
• For five motes, one Willpower, she can perfectly dodge a source of uncountable damage (Exalted, p. 205), unless it can’t possibly be dodged. Against recurring uncountable damage, this defense’s cost is waived after the first use in a scene.

Reset: The Alchemical can reset the Evasion-doubling defense by successfully dodging three decisive attacks from nontrivial opponents.

Submodules
Hyperspatial Geometry (3xp; Dexterity 6): The Alchemical calculates defense positions that transcend
mundane geometry. She can double her Evasion against undodgeable attacks, and doesn’t need to pay
separately to be able to dodge them.

But hey, 4m and the 'dodge undodgable' part doesn't need resetting.

[bleak hazel]

they can use SSE and Shadow Fades At Dawn/Leaping Dodge to dodge one and then move a range band away, but if your enemy is in OSOI Form they can stab you at medium range anyway by clashing their knives together or similar

Solar Dodge: did not beat Malenia's second phase

[winged swallow]

i was just telling delilah this but like

how did they fuck up core integrity charms so bad

you are the chosen of the UNCONQUERED sun

your key theme is RIGHT THERE

[tulip folio]

I also love that Alchs can just decide to dodge in directions that other people can't comprehend. XD

[bleak hazel]

it's HGD/SSE smushed together, huh

neat

"double base evasion" is almost certainly going to save you unless your opponent is rolling like I was in my last combat and landing decisives with 16 sux

average full excellency solaroid decisive is 11.5 sux

so base 6 evade, double to 12, add a couple from TPDU

[tulip folio]

And unlike solar dodge it can work against repeated undodgable attacks. It's still 4 motes per one you wanna dodge but that's still likely less than the other guy spent making it undoddable. XD

[bleak hazel]

yeah you beat both Sids and Solaroids in that department

[tulip folio]

Alch dex charms are cracked. XD

[bleak hazel]

it's still a fairly good deal for the SMArtist purely because if you don't actually need to enhance it, BSFLI is very affordable, but you get to Not Die

look at this thing, it's hideously good

what if someone was trying to use ranged weaponry against you but you popped Omnislash

[tulip folio]

...yeah, that bypasses Basicly Everything that could give the guy some extra durability.

The fucking environmental hazard is just insult to injury. XD

[winged swallow]

thought that said omnissiah

and i was like "damn, alchemicals popping off"

[tulip folio]

The Alchs have their own thing that's not far off in how beefy it is.

[fierce star]

Alchemicals: every single one of my charms is half the cost of yours and equivalent to like, three of them.
Also Alchemicals: I can use exactly seven at any given time.

(this is exaggeration for comedic effect.)

[bleak hazel]

Alchs are terrifying because you get to do that to them exactly once and then they go back home, refit with five bot-bodies and the health gate charm and come back

for like, two XP

[tulip folio]

Alchs are also the secret best users of 'I can voluntarily lose a limb to tank a lot of damage'

[bleak hazel]

and then you try the same blitz on them and they shrug, decline to defend at all and maybe go down to -1s

[tulip folio]

As rite of reconfiguration puts the arm back on in 2 hours

[bleak hazel]

high durability builds in Exalted also have the ability to go "fuck you, get your stab in" and just eat the decisive to put the enemy on 3 int

Sids have a harder time getting set up for that but they also have arguably the best charm for it

Alchs and Lunars just do it out the gate

[tulip folio]

...snrk

Due to it being pretty good for them, Alchemical fights run under the same rule as children's cartoons - You can lose a lot more limbs if you're a robot that you couldn't do to a fleshy character.

[bleak hazel]

hah

also helps if you have six arms

it's like techpriests, they lose mechadendrites like spare pencils

[fierce star]

god I really love alchemical charm names, too

[tulip folio]

Important question for alchemicals losing limbs - Is beating someone with your own severed arm still considered unarmed? 😛

[fierce star]

and I love that they actually exist in setting as real things so I have an excuse to yell things like TRANSFINITE ULTRAVIOLENCE DRIVE or CATASTROPHIC ESSENCE COLLIDER ARRAY in-universe without being arguably metagaming

[bleak hazel]

overarmed, that's two arms per punch

[fierce star]

which I know is a silly thing to worry about but i have brain problems

[bleak hazel]

Sid charms also very good for that

[fierce star]

... wait

wait wait wait

[bleak hazel]

at some point a Sid and an Alch have to have had a giant shonen fight calling all their attacks with the Solar and Lunar sitting on the side going "why are they talking like that?"

[fierce star]

... I think that's a Lancer reference.

[winged swallow]

yeah Alch charms go hard

i'm pretty sure "do not stare directly into the aperture" is older than lancer

pretty sure

i'll have to check

[fierce star]

I mean on the one hand it is on everything wiht lasers, but like

[winged swallow]

hm! apparently beyond laser warnings it is not older than lancer

i am Incorrect, and i shall take it on the chin

[fierce star]

yeah

[tulip folio]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuhegyYeZEU&ab_channel=RogueMage I have remembered what I need to do at some point for an Improvised Alchemical Unarmed Attack.

[bleak hazel]

wait hang on a second

unarmed is a valid weapon for OSOI

wait never mind doesn't work, Unobstructed Blow is Simple

bullshit averted by good game design

[tulip folio]

What would have happened?

[bleak hazel]

5m to make any attack unblockable, so you enter OSOI form for medium range attacks and then sink literally your whole mote pool into seven unblockable/undodgeable attacks

[tulip folio]

Hah

[spring lynx]

yeah things like that are why simple charms exist

[bleak hazel]

what BSFLI is especially good at is absolutely blitzing enemy ranged attackers, because you can get on top of them and they don't have a parry rating

it's also just cool

someday I will learn how to video edit well enough to make those flashing intertitles you get in Superhot so I can put my SMA charms up on the screen one word at a time

[tulip folio]

New Alchemical Submodules

Man-Machine Weaving Engine
-Adjustable Sorcerous Cells (3xp): When you undergo the Rite of Reconfiguration, you can change your Terrestrial Circle Control Spell.

God-Machine Weaving Engine
-Blessing-And-Curse Judgement Engine (6xp): When you cast a spell, you may pay 1 willpower to exclude any number of targets. This costs no additional willpower if all excluded targets are trivial characters or bystanders.
-Multipurpose Divinity Adaptor (3xp): When you undergo the Rite of Reconfiguration, you can change your Celestial Circle Control Spell.

Theurgic Essence Capacitor
-Iterative Replication Matrix (6xp): Excess Sorcerous Motes beyond what is required to cast a spell are retained, being treated as Sorcerous Motes for another casting of the same spell.
--Generalized Theurgic Convertor (3xp, Iterative Replication Matrix): Excess Sorcerous Motes retained by Iterative Replication Matrix can instead be treated as Sorcerous Motes for the casting of any spell the Alchemical knows.

Took a shot at some Alchemical Sorcery things. Trying to play into the Alch themes of A) Being Plug and Play B) Not wanting to hurt the people you're protecting B) Having long-term efficiency.

They don't get 'Free Shape Sorcery on JB' but they get to retain the 2-3 sorcerous motes they had left after casting a spell for a head start on the next version of that spell if they've got the 'I can retain sorcerous motes turn to turn' charm going.

[bleak hazel]

I would go by standard Exalted rules and say "trivial characters or bystanders" because a) it would be mean to blast your fix beetle bro and b) that means you have to try to avoid friendly BGs, which aren't Trivial

[tulip folio]

That's fair!

I'll make that adjustment.

[bleak hazel]

the Theurgic Essence Capacitor modules seem totally fine by me but do need to specify how long the motes stay around

but give me a second to try to break this out of good playtester sense

[tulip folio]

Theurgic Essense Capacitor is the 'You don't lose sorcerous motes until the end of the scene, even if you stop shaping' charm, so I figured it would last as long as the charm is going.

But that's fair

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah if it's scenelong then this is totally fine

if it lasted longer there's an exploit mode where you find the cheapest possible spell that costs 1wp and overcast it as hard as you possibly can at some rocks

thus moving all your banked Smotes into this charm's pool, so you can do your shaping rituals again and then go adventuring

[tulip folio]

Makes sense.

[bleak hazel]

admittedly "hang on got to warm up"
boulder explodes
"OK, round 2 of effigy carving"

kind of a funny scene

[tulip folio]

Yeah, it's scene-long.

It's that general 'hey, you don't lose the entire spell if you Do Something Other Than Spellcast' that all exalts have.

...at least I think DB have it

I've never checked DB sorcery charms

I know basicly everyone has it

[bleak hazel]

I checked a couple of hours ago when I was writing about that stuff and then completely forgot instantly

deebs don't have it

[tulip folio]

Ooof, poor deebs

[bleak hazel]

doesn't seem unreasonable for them to have it, they were an early book

I'd give them something that does basically that

[coral wraith]

Solars don't have it either iirc

[tulip folio]

Yeah, it's just a really nice Quality Of Life charm.

[bleak hazel]

Solars have zero sorcery charms besides their free-occult-excellency one

deebs have these, which are actually kind of neat

[prisma sun]

Which Sids could also make at extreme range if they can naturally get Medium

[bleak hazel]

FWR is a bit pricy, but Dragon-Sorcerer Puissance is perfectly respectable

[winged swallow]

hey did we ever choose a virtue/season for integrity btw

[bleak hazel]

Raptorspam Deeb is probably quite a scary build actually

[tulip folio]

Dragon-Sorcerer looks really good but I would say - Really wants a GM who's okay with a player putting their own twist on spells/making their own custom ones.

[prisma sun]

I think you did ask about it

[tulip folio]

As the split among elements and spells is not super even

[bleak hazel]

raptorspam solar is a very solid sorceror build and sometimes considered a bit dodgy because it mostly bypasses the init system in favour of environmental hazard spam

a deeb with this should be as good or better at it, wait one