Exalted

[bleak hazel]

this is tech that Crane and Sid Melee can put together but it's rather more expensive (5-8m rather than 4)

my one complaint with this is that right now it has an incredibly awkward transition into SMAs because none of them use swords and you can't punch with it

which applies to a few MAs

[velvet raft]

Yeah, we really need the sword SMA

[bleak hazel]

honestly the place I most want to put this is on my Sword Alch

very few mastery benefits, really solid passive defence, Aim to make the Alch excellency peak a little higher

[velvet raft]

Grave Cut looks like it would have good VBOS synergy

[quiet garnet]

Is this from the Sidereal companion book?

[velvet raft]

Upcoming, yeh

I'm pretty sure radiant breath is supposed to be referencing a specific koryu style, lemme find it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jigen-ryū

This thing. They practice exactly one cut, a charging vertical cut.

[winged swallow]

https://write.ellipsus.com/edit/a5b75899-3783-4b2f-a2e2-1cf76b30efe6#c8448660-a086-4b60-94c9-c0c6b842fe6d just dropping a link to the reforging's new document on account of i finally freed myself from google's clutches

everything on here is still suuuuuuuuuuuper wip

but

now you can watch it in progress

[tulip folio]

Yay

[velvet raft]

Oh, you're bringing versatile over? Interesting.

[winged swallow]

i had/have some ideas that are similar, in practice, to abyssal mote vamp but obviously not Just Straight Up That. in addition to other ones

but those are just that right now

Ideas

[velvet raft]

I worry that the Keen Sense line ends up being too niche due to having to pick a single sense on purchase, and I wonder if allowing the Solar to purchase the other senses for 3-4 xp would make sense?

[winged swallow]

it would probably work like Abyssal Sense stuff, where it's sight and then the other four are paired up

sorry i just got back from a walk lol, so my brain isn't particularly in work mode presently

[velvet raft]

No worries. I just feel like three charm purchases to get it on all senses is a little excessive.

[winged swallow]

i think, out of the things that need changing and based on what i know of Abyssal Awareness play, it's fine. and it keeps it relatively easy to split out the different sense-based charm paths rather than it be one (1) charm with repurchases that i have to finagle the prereqs for.

i've found that it's like, either you're dabbling in Awareness and you're buying it once as a prereq to one you Really Want, or you're going all in on it to be the Master Of Senses and then it's like "well okay then, this is still a fine gate to them becoming the Divine Panopticon."

if it was one sense per purchase, then like. okay, that's a little too taxing

[tulip folio]

I know alchs have 1 charm per sense but notably - Picking each of those charms gets you 6exp worth of submodules for 'extra cool things' for that sense.

[winged swallow]

but it's Sight (The Most Regularly Applicable Sense) and the other four are packaged in pairs

and if i'm being honest: Taste and Touch are kinda freebies in my mind, added on to the fun ones (Scent and Hearing)

[tulip folio]

Like one of the options for their hearing one is 'Oh yeah, my hearing is so fine it can pick up telepathy, prayer and other silent communication'. XD

[winged swallow]

i will be expanding e1 trees for stuff a lil' more, so people have more fun things they can use outta the gate

[velvet raft]

I guess if the Abyssal mirrors are what they are you probably don't want to change things too much, but I think it would be good to juice them up in distinct ways if they're gonna remain separate.

Not unlike the alch stuff but maybe stronger and less modular?

But I get why keeping them mirrored with Abyssals makes sense.

[winged swallow]

there are just some mirror charms that are like

Straightforward Boosters to stuff

and they're pretty flavor agnostic?

so it makes no sense for me to throw them out when they're Perfectly Good

[winged swallow]

curious what you mean by this though

[tulip folio]

Silly Pondering: Make the Solar 'I can see through walls/hear long distances' really good but also tied to sunlight. So they can see/hear anything illuminated by sunlight.

[velvet raft]

Just juice beyond the baseline Keen Sense stuff but specific to each set of senses.

[winged swallow]

i worry that a charm that only works when it's daytime, for a tree that's historically Night-based, is both reminiscent of Dragon-Blood style restrictions and a bit flavor-incongruent

but at the same time, i kinda get what you're going for

[winged swallow]

mhm, mhm

[velvet raft]

I personally feel they're a bit anemic as charms go but, again, I get it and that's just my feeling.

[winged swallow]

i understand Awareness has suffered in the past

and i'm gonna try my best to make it more interesting

[tulip folio]

Let me get the Alch version, as it's sorta inspiring my thoughts.

[winged swallow]

i'm gonna try to give people a reason to take it as a Supernal, y'know

[tulip folio]

Here we go. The Alch 'I can see through walls' submodule. It lets you see through walls but it's best vs thinner walls. I was thinking the Solar version would have its difficulties scale less with 'thickness of wall' and more with 'Is there Light' (So like +4 if there is no light, +2 if there is light and no penalty if there is sunlight).

[winged swallow]

if people have ideas on fun directions for "Senses With the Limits Taken Off"

then im all ears

[winged swallow]

hmmm..

i will certainly keep it in my brain

[tulip folio]

I do like some of the higher essense sense upgrades for Alchs, where they go 'fuck it, using robobrain for cool shit' like running signal interception.

Alch Investigation charms just absolutely crap clues everywhere, which is fun. Their capstone 'unlimited clues with my smart logic brain'

[velvet raft]

Awareness definitely has potential for stuff like smelling a person's entire history, hearing the movements of essence, and seeing into the past or future.

Maybe not those specific things, but stuff like that.

At higher essence.

[tulip folio]

...oh hey, I'd not noticed this Alch combat charm in perception. It's fun.

[velvet raft]

Psychometry would be an easy thing for touch, although I thiiiiink Sids may do something like that?

[winged swallow]

yeah i think so

and psychometry feels more like it would be Investigation

which i'm learning is like

kind of an issue?

[tulip folio]

'Hey, mr heavy armour, I've noticed you're bad at dodging. I would like an auto-success on attacks against you for as long as I commit this single mote'. XD

[winged swallow]

a lot of fun awareness charms feel like they're just better as Investigation

[velvet raft]

Investigation and Awareness feel like they have some unfortunate overlap, yeah.

[winged swallow]

but i wonder if there's a way to turn that to our advantage

[velvet raft]

I'd be inclined to think Investigation should be more focused on the mental side of things, and Awareness on the sensory experiences.

But that may be too hard a line.

[tulip folio]

I think my point of distinction is that awareness is focused on what is there, investigation is focused on links to other things based on existing stuff.

So like, investigation is about 'Hey, this mud means he came from the docks'

Link from A to B

[winged swallow]

📝

[tulip folio]

LIke I could see an investigation charm that lets you Judge Intentions on someone who's not in the scene, based on stuff they've interacted with.

[velvet raft]

I wonder if Come Up With A Plan sorts of charms would also fit Investigation?

"I've analyzed the facts and determined the optimal course of action."

... oh god

https://tenor.com/VipP.gif

[tulip folio]

See: That Alch charm I just posted, which is within their investigation setup. XD

100% what it is

[velvet raft]

Awareness on the other hand feels more like "I can hear the circulatory system of everyone in this room."

More Daredevil kinda stuff I guess?

He might be a good touchstone.

[tulip folio]

...I've also realized that Imperfection Analysis Module is really good against people who focused Block over Dodge.

As both their attack and defence are linked to the same ability

[winged swallow]

daredevil is honestly a solid touchstone lmfao

[tulip folio]

misunderstood, gave the solar charms based on Fighting, Fucking and Ninjas. Generally combining those three things in some combo.

[winged swallow]

fuck dammit

[tulip folio]

Sorry XD

[wise ocean]

You forgot Ride and Sail, Iki

Fighting, Fucking, Ninjas, Cowboys, and Pirates

Should cover it all

[tulip folio]

...I'm also realizing that I 100% want Imperfection Analysis Module for RiRi.

[velvet raft]

There were a few pages from a recent Daredevil comic posted a month or two back, which showed Daredevil beating up US Agent and his goons pretty one-sidedly, and just some of the basic visuals feel like they could relate to some Awareness and Investigation concepts.

[tulip folio]

As throwing spells is perception attacks. So she'll have good perception and it's one of the few ways to get a persistant bonus to attack spell rolls outside of basic excellency.

[tulip folio]

US agent basicly exists for when you need a government stooge to kick about. He's great. XD

[velvet raft]

Ah, here it is https://www.reddit.com/r/Marvel/comments/122lwiz/daredevil_vs_usagent_daredevil_2022_5/

[winged swallow]

hmmm investigation combat-adjacent charms..

[tulip folio]

Vague Pondering: Put the 'act higher in init order than your actual init value would normally allow' in Investigation.

As you already know how everyone else plans to move.

You're reading the fight

[velvet raft]

That does make sense.

Daredevil is great as a representative night caste, really.

[fierce star]

a night with some eclipse tendencies

[tulip folio]

I could also see like 'Simple Action Case Target in Combat + Init Drain'. So you look over your attacker, work out who he is and where he's coming from...and doing so gives you an edge. Limit how often you can do it but it lets you drain someone's init a little while hitting something other than their actual defence scores.

[velvet raft]

Brawl, Stealth, Awareness, Investigation, and Integrity all feel very Him.

[winged swallow]

hmmm

i like that divide between awareness and investigation, iki

definitely helps my thinkin

[tulip folio]

Yay

[velvet raft]

Sherlock Holmes has lots of charms from both, I suspect.

[tulip folio]

Sherlock Holmes has martial arts favoured 😛

So in 'worrying things with RiRi' - She now has Whispers.

I'm sure things will go fine when the experimental necromancer develops whispers.

Man, Great Swords got kinda screwed out of this, not being included. XD

It's a style where one of the forms is about using your sword two handed where you can't use a two handed sword.

[next delta]

Though you can't use the other forms if you can't use your sword one handed

[bleak hazel]

this morning, on Exalted: I notice that Peaceable Conclusion's actual incentives start shading dangerously close to Murder Is Meat

damn, Endings

Adorjan would be proud

this is either the benevolent psychopomp charm or the "I just merked this guy and I can guarantee neither his ghost or this obvious corpse will come back to bite me, feels real good" charm

the best part is that Sidereals gaining limit gives them willpower, so this just makes space in your limit track for more delicious delicious hubris that will totally not result in you needing to do this again

[tulip folio]

Peaceable Conclusion is to Sids as 'shoving unconsious guards in vents' is to Deus Ex.

'These are No Longer A Problem'

Somewhere there is a Social Endings set up to give people defining intimacies of 'I wish I was dead' to instant-kill them with Peacable Conclusion.

[bleak hazel]

holy shit that's such a good idea

guess what else Medicine has

[tulip folio]

It's got that 'develop a defining intimacy towards being cool with death or fuck off' iirc?

[bleak hazel]

yeah, either you accept mortality or you become utterly terrified of it

sadly it requires the fuckass fake healing charms as prereqs

this is actually a way better Cup Boils Over than the real Cup Boils Over

you are still talking people into suicide, but you're doing it in a way less obviously aggressive way and you don't have to delete literally all their intimacies first

[tulip folio]

Abyssal: "I develop an intimacy of nihilistic despair and hatred of life via the power of whispers, what can you do now?"
Endings Sid: "Man, don't you feel tired? Wouldn't it be better to just lie down?"

Abyssal: "HEY, HEY. LOOK, I'M NOT SAYING I WANT TO DIE. COME ON NEVERBORN, BACK ME UP!"
Neverborn: "END OUR SUFFERING, LET US BE UNDONE!"
Abyssal: "Shit."

[bleak hazel]

the Infernal/Sidereal buddy cop show is somehow less fucked up than the Abyssal/Sidereal buddy cop show

conveniently there are different "de-enemy of fate this man" charms for each

[tulip folio]

...they don't seem great but it's very cute how the Alch book gives Apostate-only submodules, not just charms.

So you can give an apostate an alch charm and then his special titan cancer upgrade to it.

[bleak hazel]

also help I am becoming seduced by infernal soul hierarchy stuff

because I want to do a shameless 1960s pulp supervillain who has his whole supporting cast in his soul, which is an evil doom lair that is about 99% cosmetic

you stick your head in there and it looks amazing before you realize about 80% of it is the metaphysical equivalent of a matte painting background

[tulip folio]

I really hope they keep the 'do pulp supervillian shit, lose limit'. As it really helped with the 'rock star' part of 'hell rock star', making you act self-destructively in very fun ways.

Loviatar got herself a major antagonist out of a mortal sorcerer by going 'man, I'm a bit high limit...wait, I can bleed some off' and explaining to the mortal sorcerer who'd been trying to stop her that she wasn't 'merely' another sorcerer but a chosen of the Yozi, then tossing her into a portal to Malfeas.

Said sorcerer came back as a Twilight, having clawed their way back to creation.

[bleak hazel]

"Supervillain" is honestly one of the only vibes I just can't seem to get out of any other exalt

despite Dual Magnus Prana existing

[tulip folio]

Something I'd kinda like for them? You know how most survival trees say 'animal familiar' a lot of the time to limit some of the bigger effects?

I really want infernals to go 'animal or first circle demon familiar'

Let them Make My Monster Grow a Blood Ape

...this seems actually genuinely pretty good. 1/Scene, heal half the damage you do. Resets if you kill a real dude.

[bleak hazel]

is it too on the nose if I have various neomah and similar lounging around in my soul/malfean doom manse in the shapes of assorted eye candy men and women and then whenever I'm not showing off they all just go offscreen and go back to doing neomah things

just a little field of burning towers somewhere in the grounds

[tulip folio]

I think a certain level of self-awareness makes that very fun. It's about presentation, dammit

[bleak hazel]

I was struck by a line in the film Diabolik, which is insanely good by the way, I highly recommend watching it since it's just on youtube

[tulip folio]

Actually, looking over them...a lot of these Apostate Submodules are Pretty Solid.

[bleak hazel]

anyway, the mob boss with the best dubbing I've ever heard is making evil plans on his boat and the various bikini girls in the foreground look at each other and go "this is such a waste of us, they've been scheming all day and we haven't even got to have an evil party"

[tulip folio]

Turning the toxin fog module ally-friendly and giving a boost to allies in it is a nice upgrade.

[bleak hazel]

the heal charm is quite neat, combat-time healing is hard to get

[tulip folio]

This is also just Really Solid.

'I hacked your exaltation'

Also: Christ that's scary.

Apostates will fuck you up.

[bleak hazel]

I suppose scattering the monster over the surrounding terrain does qualify as making the monster grow

[tulip folio]

Part of it is that Gremlins are minimum essence 2. So that's Difficulty 5, 6 damage for even the weakest gremlin.

If this guy has celestial-circle sorcery and can summon second circle gremlins that's 'Oh hey, my miniboss is about to die...DIFFICULTY 10 11L EXPLOSION!'

[bleak hazel]

I was unaware you could request gremlins in particular with autobot sorc

[tulip folio]

They're machine spirits still. Just, you know...don't. It's not smart.

Especially since autobot sorcery very notably gives you zero power to command a summoned machine spirit

So summoning Tamarak Met, the Blighted Scalpel is mostly just a fancy way to commit suicide.

I say that but the book actually does expressly mention player characters can talk to this guy.

Just...you know...don't. You can but you shouldn't. It's still not smart.

He has cut down Alchemicals, machine spirits, and other gremlins, but can sometimes be convinced to join forces against some greater danger by canny rhetoricians or pious Champions. He takes perverse pleasure in sabotaging the same systems he once so carefully maintained, creating electrical failures that ripple throughout metropoli. In his more lucid moments, he remembers the pride he once took in his work and judges himself as harshly as he might any other, despairing at how far he has fallen.

He's got a major positive intimacy towards mortals of Paternalism.

3e does a pretty good job of remembering that under all the corruption and the issues, Gremlins and Apostates are not like...Mindlessly Evil Goblins or something.

They're all broken but you have to have been okay at some point to be broken.

Clambering Horror Mechanism is the example Apostate and he's actually like...Objectively The Good Guy in his backstory, he's just at this point profoundly broken with how he was treated.

Courageous Guardian Construct was a lauded hero among the clades of Gulak. The Soulsteel Caste was inseparable from his Orichalcum Caste Circlemate, Numinous Shining Array, thwarting countless threats from heretical voidbringer cults and civil dissidents over their long career. Contrary to the stereotypes of their castes, Construct was always the more compassionate of the two, urging leniency and mercy to temper the brutality of his more zealous partner.

Their decades-long partnership ended with the Ithryoum Plaza massacre, when Numinous Shining Array slaughtered dozens of One Tier Movement protestors obstructing one of Thutot’s main thoroughfares. The two Champions argued furiously, then came to blows when Construct interposed himself between Array and the surviving protestors. Construct came out the worse for it, badly wounded, and retreated from his wrathful partner. Only later did he learn that his Circlemate had denounced him as an Apostate, accusing him of conspiring with Gulak’s enemies as proof of his Blighted corruption. Construct was forced to flee Thutot, hounded through the streets by militias of the very people he had sought to protect.

Construct withdrew to the Reaches in shameful exile. Deep in despair, he dwelled upon what had been taken from him. He grieved his betrayal at the hands of his Circlemate, and the hatred of the nation he’d devoted his life to protecting. The Blight took root in the darkness that rose to fill his mind, kindling fury and hatred against his former home. If Gulak wished to name him an Apostate, then an Apostate they would have. Courageous Guardian Construct ceased to be, replaced with Clambering Horror Mechanism.

Apostate Optimus Prime over here.

[bleak hazel]

Clambering Horror Mechanism is also a very good name in general

[bleak hazel]

now where on Autobot did she find those

[tulip folio]

Well, there's one deathly titan on Autobot.

[bleak hazel]

is Riri's game Play By Post or do you have actual sessions?

[tulip folio]

The Engine of Extinction, Autobot's own sickness.

[tulip folio]

Actual sessions on discord, though the game is still in setup so it's mostly dealing with some intro stuff/the GM laying plothooks before the First Proper Session.

[bleak hazel]

I do like the Engine of Extinction just kind of shoving its head in from the potentiality of future neverbornification

[tulip folio]

The GM didn't give us the normal +5 dots for being one of the eight cities (As we're in a small city without the resources of one) but instead gave eacy of us some tailored bonuses in intro stuff.

[bleak hazel]

although unfortunately Autobot going Neverborn deprives us of the wonders of FULLY OPERATIONAL BATTLE PRIMORDIAL which I think was the Viator's goal back in 1e

via various boring chaos cultist measures

[tulip folio]

In RiRi's case it was some dots in whispers and, more concerningly:

Cult 2 (Erlik Gremlins)

[bleak hazel]

like Admiral Nelson in Trafalgar Square, they will have to build the statues to her rather larger than 1:1 scale

Erlik is very cool though, the big worm city is one of my favourite plot hooks

honestly most of the written-up Apostates are pretty neat

but Erlik and the Angel Ramiel apostate that's just a big floating ring of doom are my favourites

[tulip folio]

I'm a big fan of how sympathetic they made Clambering Horror Mechanism. Like he's still 100% unambiguously a threat to society but his ex-friend isn't any better and avoided becoming an apostate because he's a horrorshow in ways that are not anti-autocthon, just douchy.

I think they also made it much more in 3e 'Oh yeah, the cities will kick the shit out of each other'

Instead of needing every problem to be related to gremlins.

It's avoiding the 40k 'Surprise, this problem was actually chaos, like every other problem'

[bleak hazel]

honestly I sometimes find it hard to picture Gremlins as the terrifying murder machines they apparently can be because it's kind of a cute name

it's like imagining an insurgency made up entirely of 40k grots

[tulip folio]

I think a good part of them is they're...mostly kinda sad. They're harmful but they're harmful in the way that a runaway robot vacuum with knives strapped to it is dangerous.

It's not built for this.

The book also seems to paint them heavily as 'if you abuse machine spirits, you get gremlins'

Once, Tamarak was a subminister to Mog. In his original role, he was the Error-Excising Scalpel, an expert engineer and troubleshooter tasked with locating faults in the Engine of Lightning’s complex systems and those of its associated sub-organs. Mog recommissioned him as the Scalpel That Walks, a surgical combatant to face a rising tide of gremlins and blight zones. Tamarak Met served dutifully but without joy for decades amidst the Blight, until his fabled precision finally slipped. One casualty begat another as his focus faltered.

The Second Circle Gremlin became such not becuase he Was Just Evil but because they took a guy who's purpose was to fix and help and turned him into a weapon until he snapped.

This guy needs a hug but it's hard to give him one when he's a spinning blender of Lightning Scalpels.

[bleak hazel]

an autocthonian machine spirit conducting unwanted surgery on its own subsouls? say it ain't so

[winged swallow]

yess… YESS!!

[tulip folio]

Hmm... @bleak hazel any thoughts on Even Blade as we've seen it? It looks really good for sids, as you can get it done really fast (As you only need 1/4 masteries to finish it as far as SMA are concerned) and it loves aimed attacks.

[bleak hazel]

looks really good, but I am a bit frustrated with it for Sids because while you can finish it really quickly, you also can't use it with any SMAs we currently have

none have weapon compatibility with swords and Enlightenment charms do nothing for regular Martial Arts

[tulip folio]

Hmm...that's fair. I hope we get at least 1-2 sword SMA.

[bleak hazel]

I do think Alchs and Lunars would very much like it though

easy self-contained combat toolkit

[tulip folio]

It does seem low on mastery effects.

Which Alchs like

[bleak hazel]

and fairly relaxed Mastery keywording, yeah

if I was a Sid I'd probably stick Melee and maybe season in a tiny bit of Even Blade for juice

[tulip folio]

The form mastery is nice but if you just accept you won't be swapping types that often, it's not relaly a problem. XD

[bleak hazel]

like that boost-turn-order charm, which is very cute

[tulip folio]

Close Your Eyes and Look looks fun, though not really white-room crazy.

Still good for giving you a mini-interrogation if you end up in a brawl

'Hey Mr Assassin, why are you trying to kill me?'

I'm intrigued by Winter Songbird Even Blade for Alchs that have 'oh and I've got a little martial arts too' rather than it being a primary thing.

Since you get the aim without a WP cost if you didn't attack last turn.

It's great if you're like a combat mage who will be shaping spells here and there, or a sneaky character that wants to hide and then stab or even someone with a good variety of 'useful in combat' simple charms.

Like an Alch who goes 'I didn't attack last turn, I just turned on my Acid Spray Aura'

If that makes sense?

I also think that Garda Talon Even Blade is going to be really liked by Alchs and Lunars as notably: Their grapple charms are not brawl charms.

So they get all their grapple charms on martial arts with a sword.

An Alch can Garda Talon Grapple into Personality Override Spike.

[winged swallow]

horrifying thanks

[bleak hazel]

I am a big fan of Winter Songbird, just stylistically

but yeah the grapple tech looks great

[winged swallow]

presently futzing with Thousand Blades/Even Blade (Immanent Steel) on Harrow

it’s got some simple, fun combos in there

and i like harrow being able to learn about her targets by attacking them

[tulip folio]

I'm thinking I'm going to swap out Jade's Shining Point for Even Blade. Shining Point is better but it's also...Shining Point. It's a Bit Much.

[winged swallow]

makes for very good cat-and-mouse type stuff

Shining Point has one flavor, meanwhile: Even Blade comes in four

even if IS is very Single Point adjacent

[tulip folio]

Yeah and Jade is less Iajutsu and more Wuxia 'You did what with a sword?'

And Even Blade has a lot more 'sword shouldn't do that'

Nesting Sparrow Defense is just pure 'Oh you're just Fucking With This Guy you outclass' wuxia swordmaster.

[winged swallow]

i do be contemplating Garda Talon for Harrow because the flavor is very good very yumyum

and there’s something to grabbing someone by the collar, stabbing them with the sword in hand, and then the other two floating swords following suit

[bleak hazel]

I want to put this on Sids but the lack of SMA compatibility is really getting my goat in this department

[winged swallow]

e’er the case

[tulip folio]

I will say: Flashing Zephyr Cut looks fun but it also feels like it really wants the GM to make adjudication on the mobility penalty of enemy armour, as it's not on the quick character sheets.

As while you can inflict them, you'd really want 'Hey GM, he's wearing heavy armour. That means he's got the heavy armour mobility penalty...right?'

[winged swallow]

i think if an ST said no to that, i’d be a bit confused

[velvet raft]

I do like that all of the Even Blade substyles feel genuinely compelling in their own way.

[winged swallow]

bit late, but yeah i agree

they do feel like different schools, and their philosophies shine through nicely

[bleak hazel]

was inspired by some chatter in the Exalted discord to crunch the numbers on Reflex Sidestep Technique

I'm pretty sure the optimal way to ambush a solar is to deliberately hand a bow to an untrained man and give him as much fate boost as humanly possible

the way RST works means that they don't get access to other defensive charms unless you roll a good number of 1s and 2s on the attack, and if they have a maxed Dodge pool that number is probably 3 or 4

if you go in with a maxed decisive pool w/ no excellency and a stunt you roll 13 dice, and half the time you get 3+ 1s and 2s and they casually Seven Shadow Evasion out of the way

if you, Endings Dex5, pick up a bow you have absolutely no idea how to use and avoid stunting, you roll 5 dice with TN4 from sid excellency and an autosux from WP, they have less than a 6% chance of getting to use charms at all and you casually nail them in the head about 90% of the time

if they're Dex 1, Dodge 5, they only need a single 1 or 2 to SSE so you're fucked

admittedly the idea of killing a Solar by stacking horoscope + prophecy on a perfectly normal man with ten minutes of archery training and telling him to try really hard (dex 2, archery 1, stunt 1+, willpower) for about a 75% chance at a hit against dodge 5/6 is quite funny, but unfortunately mortals probably can't sneak or join battle hard enough to get the ambush in the first place

[prisma sun]

Theres ways around that

[bleak hazel]

yeah, you need a really good cat burglar and arrows coated in something really nasty

like yozi venom

unfortunately I think it's hard to give yourself enough of a skill issue to hit the optimal pool size if you're hanging out with jumping spider strike loaded and ready to go

blindfolding yourself and using a weapon you have no spec in gets you to 7, and deliberately poisioning yourself with arrow frog venom before the battle is unadvisable

[tulip folio]

Hmm...Thousand Blades is literally the only martial art that works with shields, I think? And that's because it works with literally everything. XD

[winged swallow]

i don't think it does

[fierce star]

Why wouldn't it? The form weapon is your chosen arsenal weapon, and shields are a weapon like any other.

[winged swallow]

well i was still typing a whole thing out

the crux of which: sure, you could have 6 shields up as your signature weapons, but if you meant a shield alongside your signature weapon

then i don't think so

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah, I was thinking Just Shields, as far as Thousand Blades is concerned.

[winged swallow]

then yeah, just pummeling people to death with a bunch of shields is like

Valid

and also really funny

[fierce star]

sorry

[tulip folio]

Pondering it for the fact that Thousand Blades has some rather nice defensive tools in the initial charms.

[winged swallow]

1k blades gotta be one of my favorite MArts

up there with like Laughing Monster, Black Claw, now Even Blade, and a couple others

[bleak hazel]

You can flip on Indomitable Shieldbearer if you're a Sid, at which point the shields are no worse than any other weapon and you can flurry FD and attack, but that also turns you into Magneto

Just bonking people with flying chunks of metal

[tulip folio]

Hmmm 'Bulwark of Faith' seem a decent idea for the name of an artifact shield?

[fierce star]

Feels very Orichalcum, yeah

[winged swallow]

damn

many raptors descend kinda slaps

feeling more delighted about making harrow a garda talon goon

[tulip folio]

Many Raptors descend really feels like it wants to be combined with something else to give 'hey, your onslaught doesn't refresh'

Rapid Barrage Configuration for Alchs feels like a natural combo.

So you can build it up more easily

[winged swallow]

Dashed Upon the Cliffs?

[velvet raft]

I feel like the one big cut school is begging to be combined with VBOS

[winged swallow]

yeah radiant breath VBoS does seem pretty rad

[velvet raft]

VBOS to set them up

Radiant Breath to knock them down.

[winged swallow]

sad that i can’t use Blood-Drinking Palm with Garda Talon

i can't walk up to someone, grab them by the collar, stab them with my sword, drink their blood and motes, refuse to elaborate, and leave

[merry arch]

homophobia...

[winged swallow]

TRUE

[tulip folio]

It's pretty good yeah, though I worry a bit about keeping it up consistently. As it takes a single successful attack back to break it and a fair bit of work to set it up.

Like not knocking it, it's an excellent extra tool. I just think you'd likely want one that's a bit more reliable as well.

But hey, a lot of splats have such.

[tulip folio]

Vague Pondering: I don't like 3e artifact weapons have better accuracy and damage than mundane weapons.

Like I know you want artifacts to be worth the dots but it does sorta end up feeling very 'if you want to do combat and you're not Unarmed Martial Arts, you need an artifact weapon'.

[next delta]

Especially since artifact weapons ignore a bunch of miscellaneous stuff that makes mundane weapons bad

[tulip folio]

That and how artifact weapons tend to get either a natural bonus or their first evocation unlocked for free.

So I feel like 'can't be trashed + bonus or evocation' is itself quite a bit of 'yes, I would like an artifact weapon'

[next delta]

Though I guess aesthetically every exalt who engages in combat somehow stumbles across an artifact weapon at some point in their pre-game history

Do the 3-dot versions generally get the extra free stuff?

I can understand "here is a power upgrade that we won't think about the evocations too hard" I suppose

[tulip folio]

This is what the 3 dot alchemical shield gets. XD

[next delta]

ok but shields need a lot of help

It's really funny to me that shields are pretty meh in Exalted given how good they were for most of history

[tulip folio]

Yeah. Prismatic Bulwark is good but it's also good because its evocations are Pretty Damn Stacked and it actually passively cares about full defence.

[next delta]

Has exalted ever had a weapon + shield marital art?

[chilly sluice]

Panoply might be when that comes out

Though it seems more about switching weapons around

[tulip folio]

It has actually! It...hasn't turned up in 3e yet.

Crimson Pentacle Blade

Was a Polearm + Shield martial art

Western Shield Posture let you use a shield + 2 handed polearm as a permanent effect (As long as you were using the martial art)

[chilly sluice]

That's neat

[tulip folio]

It wasn't a super well designed martial art but I liked it a lot.

And seeing it make a return would be nice as we don't have many polearm martial arts

And zero shield-happy ones.

Thousand Blades technically allows them but thousand blades allows whatever the fuck it wants as it's Pick Your Own Weapon. XD

[next delta]

Ok, considering a homebrew, working name: Unassailable Bulwark's Aggression

[chilly sluice]

I approve of shield bonk MA

[tulip folio]

A shield-based MA would be fun. There's a lot of ways you could make it work/shields have a lot of things they can hook into.

Defend Other, Counterattacks, Cover etc

I could see making use of the new Unbalance gambit from Even Blade.

'When you parry, unbalance gambit counterattack' on a charm or something.

hell, you could outright steal the charm. XD

[winged swallow]

reminds me of an evocation i basically ripped from ICON lol

[velvet raft]

There’s a very cool shield in Many Faced Strangers.

Basically the Shield of Crippling Doubt.

[bleak hazel]

MFS has a lot of great artifacts

[winged swallow]

it's got great MArts, great artifacts, and a fair few fun charms

[tulip folio]

I like the Resplendent Dream Brush and it's high level charms but I'll admit I'm a bit iffy on the lower level evocations you have to pick up to get there.

Speeding up mundane object only crafting feels limited.

[velvet raft]

Hopefully the Sid companion has good Sid oriented artifacts

[winged swallow]

starmetal's a fun material, and it definitely deserves some fun artifacts

[velvet raft]

The ones in the Sid book are pretty great.

[winged swallow]

<- bearer of the curse (has to build 3 qcs for tomorrow)

[winged swallow]

i do love an old wandering swordsman kinda guy tho

and even blade's preview has provided me with a way to cram one in here

[winged swallow]

chat, that fight went way quicker than i anticipated

the e3 even blade/immanent steel master water aspect did not get a chance to do his thing

and so the bear/tiger stylist got his ass

then his adopted daughter got destroyed with a Full Excellency Kick, taking her to her last -2

i didn't make the 3rd qc in the end cuz i thought 2 might be a bit much for what was basically two sidereals with real combat capabilities

[bleak hazel]

Bear Sids are pretty damn good at scronching people, yeah

not as good as legendary size lunars but surprisingly close

[winged swallow]

i threw a lot at trying to prevent that grapple roll

because i knew once it landed i was likely Fucked™

and lo

That Was What Happened

[winged swallow]

like. sidereal excellency is Crazy

they are regularly throwin' those lower-tn rolls at me, and i'm like "damn, maybe. maybe i need to challenge them more, but how"

[bleak hazel]

Has anything been Speared Boar Struggled yet?

Sid Excellency is weak on defence, and even when not throwing full excellencies at parries, they don't have the amazing mote efficiency of TN reduction for static values. A BG of archers, maybe with a mortal officer, might put some pressure on by hitting the whole group.

Not a huge BG with a cracked officer, optimised ranged BGs are a bit soak-or-die, but small ones are decent pressure supporting the main enemies.

[winged swallow]

redsid was gonna grab that at some point i think

on my own recommendation

[winged swallow]

archers bg, noted...

do forest witches do like

mortal goons

oh they do

excellent

[bleak hazel]

Speared Boar Struggle goes insanely hard, especially if you are adequately beefy

you can just take a withering and land a mean offturn grapple

[winged swallow]

Stillness-Atop-Mountain is quite possibly one of the beefier sids i've known

[bleak hazel]

SBS also scales with Essence

Don't think Anys Syn has it on her sheet but I bet she does in her full bazillion MA real build

[tulip folio]

Lands that, then combos it into like 3 different 'spinning piledriver' martial art charms

[bleak hazel]

"get your hitsies, I'm just going to add 7 non-charm sux to the attack and control roll of this grapple, autosucceed the init roll, pay zero init and immediately savage"

Red-Handed Kijamano apparently comboes it freely with unarmed Crane, which I must admit has tempted me

SBS + Wisdom of the Celestial Crane just removes people

My init + your init + you're crashed + 4 noncharm sux to attack + defining tie of love for all creation

[winged swallow]

hey

sidereal anima powers are diegetic too, right?

like their charms?

[prisma sun]

All anima powers are diagetic I think

[winged swallow]

like you can ask your endings buddy about the auspicious prospects of killing this dude Right Here

i would not presume so with non-alchemicals and non-sidereals, given that everyone else's charm names and whatnot are just like Abstractions

[prisma sun]

Yeah

[winged swallow]

like, surely to some degree they have to be things that sidereals talk about, no? like if you say "we should bring out the Lesser Sign of Mars for this one."

[prisma sun]

Yes

They are diagetic

signs of the maiden are actual physical things

you have to draw

[winged swallow]

okay but what about the auspicious prospects ones

[prisma sun]

Yea

[bleak hazel]

Eclipse Oath and diplomatic immunity are 100% dietetic, or they don't really work, so I extend that to all Solar anima powers

[prisma sun]

And Lunars made their own castes

[bleak hazel]

but yeah auspicious prospects are a thing, although they may not be codified in those specific terms

[prisma sun]

so those are also diagetic

[bleak hazel]

Personally I think there are lots of euphemisms about "checking upstairs" because spy movie

[winged swallow]

ooh yeah i like "anything from upstairs on this booboo fool?"

[prisma sun]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/426288721277747200/1402068076081451098/Screenshot_20250804_161752_X.jpg?ex=68929126&is=68913fa6&hm=75ce58bca175a93b65c158326faf4d1a939a9fff20b0e71c491dd1bcf31ac2a7&

[winged swallow]

Thousand Blades Stylists HATE him

[tulip folio]

Alchs: "...isn't that how thousand blade works?"

[bleak hazel]

https://theonyxpath.com/agents-of-heaven-preview-2-the-flying-guillotine-and-cerulean-lute-of-harmony-style/

GUILLOTINE TIME

it's nerd martial art, you attack and parry with Int rather than Dex

huge

also very short

@coral wraith if you ever want your greensid to learn how to kinda sorta fight, this is how

five charm MA + one spell

full combat kit, including some really brutal stuff

[winged swallow]

oh my god

ooooohhh cerulean lute of harmony my love

[velvet raft]

This is amazing for Sids who want to use that one seven-section staff, among other things.

[bleak hazel]

I'm just liking having a combat suite that doesn't heavily encourage nerd characters to go 1/5/1 physical, since that was incredibly weird

[winged swallow]

guiltyyy

[bleak hazel]

Also guilty, but now I can give Crimson stam and strength 2 without making him totally useless in a fight

[velvet raft]

Aye, this is good

So are combat umbrellas just Better Shields now? XD

[bleak hazel]

Yep

[velvet raft]

Cerulean Lute seems rad.

Sandal on the Blade well daaaaang.

[fierce star]

counts as a chakram for other martial arts

awh damnit now I gotta make my alchemical a sorcerer again

[winged swallow]

MAN-MACHINE WEAVING ENGINE: “and where did that lead you? Back to me.”

[fierce star]

pretty much exactly lmao

swear to god every single alchemical I make is a martial artist sorcerer craftsperson

[winged swallow]

surprisingly i’m yet to make an alchemical sorceror

[fierce star]

it's just so handy for bypassing charm slots

[winged swallow]

MArts time

[chilly sluice]

MArts and Crafts

[winged swallow]

sage nodding

[prisma sun]

For some reason the website won't load for me

[velvet raft]

Well, fuck it, time to bring back the Air Dragon/Gyroscopic Whatever alchemical.

[fierce star]

Funnily enough that's the same character, I just dropped air dragonb ecause I wasn't going dodge-heavy or very sneaky

[bleak hazel]

Crimson Rain may be a Flying Guillotine user purely because it lets me give him normal-looking physical stats so he's no longer legendarily weedy just to get Dex 5

that requires me to either learn sorcery just for FG or ask the GM if I can learn a necromantic variant thereof, but there's no particular barrier to either of those

[fierce star]

FG feels like it can go well with necromancy tbh

[prisma sun]

What other spells could get turned into Sorcerous Martial Arts?

[fierce star]

I feel like wood draogn's claw and demon-maw would be shoe-ins

[velvet raft]

In my version I was using Thousand Blades.

Hopefully we'll get some other SorcMAs, tho.

[prisma sun]

I do love Flying Guillotine though

[velvet raft]

Probably not with existing spells, but 2-3 more in the book would be rad.

[prisma sun]

I am a sucker for charms that let you kill entire armies

[velvet raft]

The name is also a reference to a bunch of wuxia shit.

The Flying Guillotine is a recurring element in the more magic-heavy wuxia.

[prisma sun]

Ye I know

The Instant Kill is really funny though

"Eat shit Stam 1 Invincible Sword Princess"

[velvet raft]

Currently infodumping about Exalted how am I doing (I'm doing badly)

[coral wraith]

This whips so hard actually

Damn

[velvet raft]

Sorcery requires four secrets charms too.

[bleak hazel]

technically the second highest level of Sidereal kung fu can punch someone into a duck, the highest level lets you punch someone into a duck and messatsu someone else on the horizon simultaneously

(for the minor cost of your entire mote pool and... 1wp, my god that enlightenment effect is wild)

the Sid Companion includes SMA secret techniques and the one for CMOS is apparently "world-spanning weaver strike", taken from a backer request to make a balanced homage to Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick

so we might have a second E5 charm for that style soon

[tulip folio]

Flying Guillotine looks very fun, though my vague concern is - Since the stat swap isn't optional, it kinda locks Lunars and Alchemicals out of using it well.

[bleak hazel]

well, they stat swap to Int, it's not like they have less of that

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah it's just the fact that it's uniquely locked out of their charms. As those charms are tied to stats. XD

Unlike most martial arts which still use dex.

Which seems a bit odd for Lunars in particular as they've got a big 'Oh yeah, we fucking love doing magic' with their sorcery focus in charms.

[prisma sun]

Well it's mostly for Sids anyhow

[tulip folio]

I mean, it's a non-SMA martial art. It's for everyone.

...also: Man, now I wanna see martial arts based on other Combat Spells.

Flesh Sloughing Wave Martial Art When? XD

...also, man RiRi wants Cerulean Lute of Harmony Style.

Prelude-to-Folly Admonition is brutal on a Spellcaster + Unit Leader.

Who will very rarely be Actually Doing Personal Attacks relative to turns spent doing other things.

[fierce star]

Just becuase it's in the sid book doesn't mean other splats shouldn't be able to use it well, tbh

hell everyone loves gates of babylon thousand blades in every splat

you wouldn't argue 'well it's mostly for lunars' there would you?

[tulip folio]

I think my personal houserule to Flying Guillotine is either:

-The stat swap is optional, not mandatory.
-the stat swap is mandatory but Lunars can use this martial art even when transformed. As they can spellcast just fine when in animal form and the stat swap means they can't use lunar charms on top of the martial art.

Depending on what the player wants to do.

[bleak hazel]

bonk, no MA while transformed

does horrible combinatorial things with animal merits

since those were not designed a) for Exalts and b) for exalts with ranged weapons

[tulip folio]

Bah, humbug.

That's fair, just feels a bit weird compatibility/usage-wise that they locked a lot of this spell behind martial arts charms when for other spells they lock similar things behind 'You can learn evocations for this spell' instead.

[bleak hazel]

the alternative is to look through all of Lunar/Alch int and see if there's anything that gives you a zillion sux on an int roll

delicious cheese

[tulip folio]

Oh no, the starting point wasn't about it being int. It was that it was only int. Basicly: Alchs can use alch charms with other chakram martial arts but can't use it with this chakram martial art because the stat swap is mandatory for the attack (Though oddly enough, not for the parry, which uses 'can'.)

[bleak hazel]

well, if you have to parry with it it uses Int

the "can" is in allowing you to block in the first place

[tulip folio]

Fair. I dunno, I don't like Mandatory Stat Swaps when 'not getting mastery' is the downside that Alchs and Lunars get for 'being normally able to combine their native combat charms with martial arts, which this prevents'.

But I'll stop grumbling about this.

Cerulean Lute of Harmony Style looks really good for Alchs, despite the pretty high amount of Mastery in it.

Due to how 'getting access to martial arts' is a relatively low investment for them/how it's good for their charm efficiency.

Otherwise Non-Combat Alchs can pretty easily get like Unstringing the Lute + Violence Turned Aside

And be net +1 in charm slots and have 'things to do in a fight that get better if I'm not doing the combat things I'm not focused on'

I think my only sadness with it is that since Parasols turn up only in this book, they didn't exist for Crane or Dreaming Pearl Courtesan, styles that thematically could have totally gone with parasols. XD

It's the limitation of 'Martial arts can only use Very Specific Weapons and we keep adding weapons'.

[fierce star]

actually razor parasols first came abou tin many-faced I think

actually no, earlier

arms of the chosen

rainwalker, one fo the aritfact weapons in it

[tulip folio]

Right. Arms of the Chosen. That would explain why it skipped my mind.

(I still would like when they add non-core martial arts weapons if they listed any previous martial arts it might be good with. It would be nice with helping multi-style compatibility. Like how Ebon Shadow somehow can't use Hand Needles, despite being the Most Ninja Martial Art because they turned up in DBs)

[bleak hazel]

the thing that's getting me with the Sid Companion being all-MA, no charms, is that when making a Sid martial artist I want to go into SMA, and many of these don't work with any SMA

[tulip folio]

'I use a parasol, which sidereal martial art can I use with this?'
'Fuck off'

[bleak hazel]

most MAs can at least throw down the weapons and punch people, albeit at reduced withering efficiency, but none of the three MAs we've seen so far work with any published SMA whatsoever

besides Cerulean Lute, using fists

(also I still have very mild salt over the Sid Companion becoming Scroll of the Monk 2 rather than actual unique stuff for Sids, although I imagine the SMA expansion charms will help with that)

[tulip folio]

Cerulean Lute of Harmony Form looks cute. It doesn't look like it does a tonne new but it's a good combination of 'Yes, you are durable' effects.

I do think I have a bit of a 'Hmm...' about Unstringing the Lute.

Mostly: You have Parasols as a Style Weapon. They have Shield, so they can't do withering damage super well.

Unstringing the lute is all about how well your withering damage roll went for getting the effect.

[fierce star]

I can kinda throw in with you on that, misc. I would've liked an actual scroll of the monk 2 (and a scroll of heroes 2, and a graceful wicked masques that functions...)

i have a lot of 'wouldn't it be nice ifs' about ex3 tbh, but it's still the best version of exalted so far

[bleak hazel]

it's such a massive game that it's hard for any one person to not have bits of it they'd rather tweak

[fierce star]

even if I did have to argue with the GM of the abyssal game i'm in that 'port' surely can't just mean shipping port for scandalous seafarer debut

[tulip folio]

Silly Alch thing - The way, in-universe, that an Alch most accurately proves they don't want to fight anyone with Unstringing the Lute is to irradiate herself.

Alternatively:

Absolute Impact Suite
Cost: 4m, 1wp; Mins: Strength 5, Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: Withering-only
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Unstoppable Impulse Engine
One of the Champion’s arms is studded with orichalcum microrepulsor nodes that store potential energy to be released upon an unfortunate target.

The Alchemical makes a withering attack against an enemy of lower Initiative. Every two extra successes on the attack roll convert one die of damage to an automatic success, rounded up.

If the Alchemical makes a smash attack (Exalted, p. 586), she converts an additional die of damage to a success for each installation of Transpuissant Strengtth Upgrade she has.

Reset: Once per scene unless reset by being crashed and building back up to Initiative 15+.

Alch: "I don't want to hurt you!" yeets them through a wall

As Absolute Impact Suite directly improves how well Unstringing The Lute is working. XD

...oh, you know what would be kinda disgusting there?

Electrification Onslaught Dynamo + Animus-Extinguishing Palm

'I clash your attack, and add a Free Tasering alongside the normal effects'

This is a simple action to set up but well...it's also Not An Attack.

So an Alch with this can get all the 'I didn't attack last turn' boosts while they wait for the absolutely brutal counterattack to happen

[bleak hazel]

you also have a lute, so you can play The Body Electric while doing so

which, fittingly, is from the album Grace Under Pressure

[fierce star]

so I stopped to have a think about something

the whole 'charms are not real' thing, it relaly only applies to solaroids, dbs and lunars doesn't it? I guess most exigents probably too. Which is I guess still the majority of exalts by both type and numbers. Nevermind.

[bleak hazel]

deeb charms are kind of real, they have hammered this out as actual things people are presumably taught to do, but presumably in 3e it's more "we have named this vague cluster of similar effects"

deebs go to Deeb School, presumably someone has figured out how to teach Wind-Carried Words 101

[fierce star]

so they're like, borderline then

I dunno, I know the whole point was to avoid 'motic science' and the enphysicification of game rules but

[winged swallow]

yeah i figure it’s more “here’s how you use your essence to project your words along the winds themselves”

much like misc said

inexact but like

[tulip folio]

Somewhere there is an Alch hearing about this who thinks 'Charms are not specific things' is just creation-side exalts saying 'Our science sucks' 😛

[winged swallow]

there isn’t a Set Way to do it as opposed to “You have to grab Fate’s strings like this to use this Technique like so”

[bleak hazel]

I do generally prefer The Rules a tiny bit more ironclad than 3e tends to have them, albeit not to the silly 2e levels of "rules are physics, everyone should clearly optimise to the most busted combo possible"

[winged swallow]

yeah i admit i wouldn’t mind a tad more.. solidity

[bleak hazel]

Sids and Alchs are about where I vibe with, unsurprisingly

[winged swallow]

but if i must choose between 3e Solarkin Charms and 2e Solarkin Charms, then i must choose 3e

[tulip folio]

Alch: "Logically if there an effect that tends to turn up regularly in specific exalts, clearly it's a thing that exists. You just don't have the vocabulary for it. Sorry but as a Social Construct myself, I tend to rant about this."

😛

[bleak hazel]

one of Exalted's big selling points is "this is a world where the supernatural bullshit actually shapes how the world works and how people behave", which is harder to hit properly when the rules for what supernatural bullshit 90% of people have is "eh, it's like vaguely firey"

[winged swallow]

yeah i get that

[fierce star]

also hot take thaumaturgy should be something anyone with enough occult studies can learn, not 'oh, well, only special people get born with the power to do a single thaumaturgical ritual'

[bleak hazel]

luckily it's fairly easy to say that a deeb will probably understand what you say when you either say the phrase "wind-carried words" in high realm or describe the vague mechanics

[winged swallow]

it is weird that thaumaturgy be like that considering sorcery/necromancy is ALSO a “you have to be born with the spark for it”

but at the same time, i kinda get it

[tulip folio]

Also: Man, give us a book with more thaumaturgical rituals.

We have more 'Terrestial AOE Blasting Spells' than Thaumaturgical rituals

[winged swallow]

but then i must also say “just because you learn it doesn’t mean everyone will. not everyone in pathfinder is a wizard, man.”

not everyone is gonna be rushing to learn abt the occult so they can make infinite bread or something

[fierce star]

yeah

like you still gotta find someone to teach you, and creation is very big and has suffered like forty apocalypses

[fierce star]

H. Mortal Occultist is an outlier, like all heroic mortals

[fierce star]

... you know given that sorcery also requires an inborn spark if you're not an exalt that means the salinan working just isn't a thing in ex3, likely nor is brigid learning sorcery from mara

[bleak hazel]

John Literal Smith who probably knows a few rituals for appeasing fire elementals and blessing iron while you beat the slag out of a fresh iron bloom is probably fairly representative of skilled smiths, though

[winged swallow]

the salinian working is apparently just “all spells are preserved” now, iirc?

i don’t know for sure since i’ll be honest

[tulip folio]

'The Salarian Working was always a lie' - Jadeborn

[winged swallow]

i didn’t even know this was a thing until i saw mention of it in iki’s jadeborn stuff

[fierce star]

yeah it was big 2e fluff where the like

[bleak hazel]

I always thought it's "those who can learn sorcery will be able to find the knowledge of techniques and spells in the fabric of the world" rather than "everyone can learn sorcery"

[fierce star]

one solar that wasn't an anarcho-royalist went 'hey isn't it fucked up that only we get to use sorcery, what if EVERYONE could use sorcery' and piggybacked her plan into an otherwise unremarkable bill the deliberative passed by default

[tulip folio]

...and posting soldier has given me Charm Ponderings. Mostly 'we have charms for preventing forced movement but I wonder how you'd price 'If I suffer forced movement, I get to change the direction as I want'' XD

[fierce star]

so she then did lead a solar-circle (what would come to be called a working) ritual to Make THat Happen

[bleak hazel]

Salina, who was a bit nuts, eventually wanted to let every human learn and cast Adamant Circle, but she didn't get anywhere near there

[winged swallow]

i’ll be kinda honest, i did like the older edition trials thing for initiating into sorcery

y’know the ones

or at least the idea of them

[bleak hazel]

The Salinian Working was already a spectacular high point of workings in general

[fierce star]

yeah, the trials were fun, especially when you had to do them in-character during a campaign

[tulip folio]

They were great. I enjoyed them a lot as a sorta fluff-based barrier for 'why not everyone is a sorcerer'.

[fierce star]

like I do like that sorcery is more varied, but at the same time it's lost something

[tulip folio]

Everyone could be a sorcerer...theoretically.

But not everyone can successfully confront their own fears.

[bleak hazel]

and worried anyone halfway sane because "give every human on earth Cantata or Second Circle Summoning, watch every 2cd be summoned and casually resist binding " is peak solar hubris

was one of those things that might get you thinking about a little usurping

entirely hypothetically, on the side

[fierce star]

IIRC the salinan working was one of the listed reasons for the usurpation, yeah

[winged swallow]

https://tenor.com/view/classic-back-to-the-future-bttf-marty-mcfly-ive-seen-this-one-gif-19802188

2cds being summoned for another revolution:

[tulip folio]

One of my Solars in 2e despite being occult 5 didn't even have Terrestrial Sorcery becuase she couldn't pass the trials. XD

[fierce star]

The trials were also the pure reason your favorite Infernal qualified for being a failexalt :P

And then if you wanted to learn necromancy you had to pass the trials again, but Death Flavored This Time.

[tulip folio]

Soaring Dream: "Yes I'm a gatekeeper and a hater. I'm also God's Favorite Princess and the most interesting girl in the world and I will never die."

[bleak hazel]

Luckily it's way easier to glue a bit of 1/2e lore into 3e's big fog of handwave than it is to unpick all of 2e and write Good Exalted on top

[winged swallow]

True

[fierce star]

that's entirelyf air

[tulip folio]

Yeah. I'll admit I tend to sorta think the trials still exist, just through the lens of what you'd doing initiation-wise.

[bleak hazel]

Personally I prefer the current myriad of initiations to the Five Stations but hey, you can add the latter in as one of the former, possibly even as "salinian sorcery"

[tulip folio]

Like an Ifrit Prince might have some heat-flavoured ones

[fierce star]

Also--yeah, as iki says

most forms of learning sorcery probably involvesomething like the trials

you know, casually drowning yourself, etc

[bleak hazel]

Also let's be real, it was one station and four tickboxes

Sacrifice was the fun part

[tulip folio]

I liked the confronting your fears one.

As it forced the player to think about the area a character isn't doing their best/is least confident on.

[fierce star]

yeah; like I said ealrier, the non-sacrifice ones were like

they mattered more if you were learnign sorcery/necromancy in character during a campaign

[tulip folio]

Mara Trials
Solar: 'I want mara to teach me magic'
Mara: 'Eh, swipe left'
Sorcery Initiation Failed

[bleak hazel]

It's mara, come back with more red flags

[fierce star]

You must be this problematic to ride

[tulip folio]

...ID, who has worse taste - Sono or Mara?

[fierce star]

Hmm

Mara would absolutely initiate Sono into sorcery, but Sono would not accept, but that's due to incompatible orientation more than having standards.

[tulip folio]

My read is 'Mara's worse but the fact it's close is worrying'

[fierce star]

lmao

yeah

(for context: Sono is a PC in a game I run that iki is a player in (not iki's PC) who has as one of her big character traits horrendous taste in romantic partners.)

[tulip folio]

She is actively attracted to red flags, we're sure

[fierce star]

she'd make a great exalt tbh, she's great at self-sabotaging hubris that somehow works out for the best just enough times to keep her alive

[bleak hazel]

Mara also has an actual reason for her red flag collection, due to the whole Ebby Demon thing

most humans make entirely organic bad decisions

[tulip folio]

Sono would make a terrifying Serenity Sid.

[fierce star]

yeah

... also yeah

also: entirely organic bad decisions, not to be confused with GMO bad decisions

[tulip folio]

Sion is just flat Malfeas Infernal. Maybe Malfeas/Cece or Malfeas/Ebby.

[fierce star]

Malfeas/cece I think

[winged swallow]

🤝

my day caste has a Presence Specialty called Red's My Favorite Color

i'm sure you can guess what it gives bonus dice on

[tulip folio]

Hahahah

[winged swallow]

The Scarlet Bride is a little unwell.

gestures at "Black Claw stylist", "Exalted at her own red wedding", and "situationship with her Deathlord"

[tulip folio]

Eh, I'm sure that's fiiinnnne

[bleak hazel]

one neat thing I just realised - FG Style is five entire charms long, and qualifies you for SMA when you finish it

it's not compatible with SMA, because no SMAs use chakrams, but you could just go into Citrine Pox and learn the entire super-medical suite

[velvet raft]

Oh true

That’s still ten charms of enter, but it’s also just ten charms to enter.

[bleak hazel]

five charms, you can start learning SMA when you finish an existing style

[velvet raft]

You need five charms to know the spell.

[bleak hazel]

oh, yeah, technically

[velvet raft]

Four secrets charms + sorcery. But a lot of those will be utility charms.

[bleak hazel]

but if you are a nerdsid, 4 secrets charms, sorcery and five MA charms is a much better spread than 10 combat charms

or 10 Medicine charms, at that

[velvet raft]

Yep.

[bleak hazel]

not too useful for Solaroids because their base medical suite is basically as good and they cannot punch arms back onto people with Essence Template, which is the main thing that CPOC does way better than everyone elses' medical trees

but good for Sids/probably Gets

primary downside is that the last charm of FGS is E4, so you need to either wait an essence level or find a Glory Sphere to get the prereqs out of the way

admittedly you then have a glory sphere

[velvet raft]

I’d go for a Key of Mastery, personally, so as to have ISOB and Flying Guillotine as control spells :D

[bleak hazel]

light armour style

[velvet raft]

Not for using the spell, just the control benefit.

The classic Sidereal bullshit XD

[bleak hazel]

showing up to the function utterly bristling with hearthstones because I need my glory sphere, my silken steel pearl, my key of mastery and my generic stone to trigger dependent (soak rock?)

[velvet raft]

See this is why I’m obsessed with PAOC.

[fierce star]

look just turn yourself into a manse, this will solve all your problems

or maybe six manses

eighteen manses?

[bleak hazel]

sadly caps out at 5 manses' worth of hearthstones

[velvet raft]

Yes PAOC does this.

XD

[fierce star]

that is the reference, yes :D

well that and the 'sleeve of saltine crackers' meme

this but turning into manses (spoilered for possible triggering images of food in a meme? Dunno if anyone who frequents this channel is food adverse in that way but better safe than sorry)

[velvet raft]

I’ve done that.

[fierce star]

I've done that and worse

I am also the 'eating shredded cheese straight out of the bag in my underwear at 3 AM' meme

🤔 this should be my next solar's limit break, sulking and eating unhealthy food when he hits too much limit because he failed his cut. Just absolute gymbro of a solar. Athletics supernal?

awh but creation probably doesn't have anywhere where it'd make sense to have modern tiers of liftbro science

[bleak hazel]

I apparently have a preternatural ability to eat stacks of crackers without water, no idea why

[bleak hazel]

gymbro abyssal is sad he hasn't made weight, because he's learned how to unfold these giant shadowy wings of destruction and somehow they weigh a few kilos

[velvet raft]

Liftbro science except it’s all about the esoteric properties of essence.

[fierce star]

Oooh I could see that. Some esoteric monastery somewhere.

He does martial arts but it's not in pursuit of martial perfection he does it because it's good cardio, but not TOO MUCH cardio, that ruins your essential pathways by forcing the heart to pump at an improper rhythm

[bleak hazel]

Sidereal Gaming

[prisma sun]

Oh fuck yeah

[bleak hazel]

https://theonyxpath.com/ages-of-heaven-preview-3-devil-stars-and-divergent-emperor-vaidurya/

craft roll, sound alarm bells

[mighty rover]

Divergent Emperor Vaidurya fits the traditional mech naming scheme

[bleak hazel]

it's not a project, so it's probably fine

[mighty rover]

(Adjective Noun Name)

[bleak hazel]

oh now we are truly gaming

@tulip folio come get your devil-stars, they rule

[velvet raft]

Ain't that just always the way.

"Betrayed by Odin, killed by Thor."

[tulip folio]

"Did anyone here who agreed to help the Exalted host not get backstabbed?"

[bleak hazel]

Solar Moment

also other Exalted moment, at that point

[tulip folio]

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/036/386/I'm_Playing_Both_Sides_Banner.jpg

Solar Diplomats during the war against the primordials

[velvet raft]

Good Sid campaign hook.

[bleak hazel]

I adore that the example Devil-Star is an ancient, powerful Woman In Black with a disguise that includes mirrorshades, just an amazing candidate for tense and cryptic conversations with the Sid arriving to take her in

[tulip folio]

Immortal Crystal Vessel (10m, 1wp; Reflexive; Instant; Decisive-only; Essence 5): The devil-star rolls dice equal to her soak, unmodified by other effects. Each success negates one level of decisive damage. Once per scene.  

That's a very good defensive effect.

God dammit Pallian-Azar.

[velvet raft]

Alright this feels like it's setup for a storyline in which the warstrider is used and things Go Horribly Wrong.

Possibly it's stolen?

Solars, Gets, maybe a rogue Sid?

[tulip folio]

While piloting Vaidurya, its pilot counts as having the Extra Limbs Merit (Exalted, p.166), and is considered an enemy of fate (Sidereals, p. 154).

I do like this a lot. This warstrider being so wrong as far as fate is concerned that 'enemy of fate' stuff worked on it/you.

[bleak hazel]

I like it more as "we need emergency backup, Unseal The Warstrider"

[velvet raft]

See it can be both.

[bleak hazel]

also, I think this might be the first ever account of a Sid who fought in the Usurpation but didn't die

[tulip folio]

Also fun to get some Enemy of Fate stuff that isn't also Creature of Darkness.

[velvet raft]

"We need emergency backup, Unseal The Warstrider" goes catastrophically wrong

[tulip folio]

The two tend to overlap a lot

[bleak hazel]

I actually have a plan

because this is the first ever warstrider to have no evocations related to its Devastating Actions or its physicality

one man war machine

[tulip folio]

Hahahah

[bleak hazel]

honestly it works

[tulip folio]

I also get the feeling this thing is going to be one of at least two starmetal warstriders in the book.

As this thing isn't the 'can use martial arts in a warstrider' mech

[bleak hazel]

it's only 40xp to get the lot, since the first one's free, they're a solid kit and you can learn them all at once at E4 and then come back for the incredibly sick capstone

[tulip folio]

...wait...heheheh

Alchs could do the same thing.

As they've got a charm to use evocations through their own body instead of the artifact it's from.

'Forgive me master, this time I must go all out' manifests four more ethereal arms and shatters the concept of causality

[velvet raft]

Well okay then.

[velvet raft]

This is just Rakan Thulio.

[tulip folio]

...I don't think anything stops said hypotthetical sid and alch both using the same artifact for this either. XD

As they just need to awaken them, not be attuned

[bleak hazel]

you do have to either be in your Warstrider or loaded up in FMMF to clash said ambush

half the benefit is that you can leave the hefty attunement cost at home, yeah

[tulip folio]

...I've also realized that an Alch can become kinda fucking disgusting if they learn some warstrider charms but don't use the warstrider.

Heaven-Forged Titan Attack
Cost: 7m, 1wp; Mins: Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: Decisive-only, Resonant
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: Unstoppable Sunfire Prominence
All-Conquering Colossus strikes with god-force, the seething infinite power of the cosmos. No army raised against it can triumph, nor even the mightiest foes withstand its wrath. 

This Evocation is a decisive attack with any combat Ability. To use it, the pilot must be at Initiative 12+. Against an enemy with Legendary Size or a battle group, the tremendous force of her blow doubles the attack’s total damage and knocks that foe back a single range band. The shockwave of the warstrider’s attack shatters the ground below her enemy, creating difficult terrain beneath him.

Against smaller foes, this attack doesn’t target a single enemy, but all such characters within close range of a point within her weapon’s range. She makes a single attack roll, but a separate damage roll against each enemy. The base damage against each enemy equals the number of threshold successes the attack rolled over that character’s Defense. She divides her Initiative evenly among all attacks (round up), and doesn’t reset until she’s completed all of them. The shockwave of her attack also turns the targeted range band to difficult terrain. 

Resonant: If Heaven-Forged Titan Attack is used as the pilot’s devastating action (p. 141), she waives this Evocation’s Willpower cost and her Initiative doesn’t reset to base after completing her attack.

The big thing here? Alch Colossi get Devastating Actions like warstriders.

But they get an upgrade to allow them to use Devastating Actions to target other legendary size targets, not just battle groups.

Rockem Sockem Robot kinda scary as fuck in the mech vs mech brawl where he's just passively got Twice Your Action Economy.

[bleak hazel]

you do kind of eat it in the charm slot department there

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah, it's not free.

[bleak hazel]

but yeah, they are undoubtedly the best Legendary Size fighters except maybe a Lunar with a billion Towering Beast Form upgrades

[tulip folio]

But if you want to play a scary battlebot you can

[bleak hazel]

and Colossi pay a lot less to stay legendary size

[tulip folio]

Which well...I'm kinda okay with the guys who had to actively spend in-exaltation resources to be good at it to be the best guys there. XD

It gives them a bit of an edge over 'well, I spent 5 dots on an artifact'

[bleak hazel]

actually Lunars have no Devastating Actions, nevermind

you beat the hell out of them because they spent 15 motes and an entire turn getting hueg

during which you chokeslam them twice

[tulip folio]

Things that both 8 year old Iki and current Iki agree on: Megazord beats Monster Magically Made Big.

[bleak hazel]

is a hypothetical Colossus RiRi still the colossus equivalent of 4' 10"

wandering around with a couple of Thousand-Corpse Goliath equivalents that are a full colossus-head taller

[tulip folio]

I'm not 100% sure how tall they are these days but yeah, she'd still be Relatively Speaking, short. XD

[bleak hazel]

I think I'd still prefer a Sid for power slamming all the evos of Vaidurya while human-sized as long as he has some easy way to get into FMMF, since an Alch is spending seven charm slots on those

silken armour with Stance-Concealing Camouflage or an equivalent does it very well

[next delta]

Unsealing the forbidden warstrider is definitely going to result in it being piloted by some 16 year old Solar

[tulip folio]

...I am pondering with an anti-big fucker thing if:

You can do warstrider-specific gambits on Any Legendary Size target with the appropriate body part (So no breach frame unless it's got a pilot etc)

would be too silly on a charm or evocation.

I don't think so, as the warstrider specific gambits are really costly gambits.

[bleak hazel]

they're also just not very good

Breach Frame aside, since that lets you deal 9HL of damage to bypass a lot more than that in Warstrider beef

I suppose if you were going to disarm anyway you might as well Disable Arm

I say go for it, although I might add something else to that charm because it's pretty niche

[tulip folio]

That's fair. Pondering what to do with a 'Hey, this is designed for feeling very Monster Hunter, endurance hunter stuff with an anti-legendary size focus'. As I kinda want to do something with that vibe but it's a tricky area to design in.

[velvet raft]

I do love that FMMF's most impressive benefit by far is down at the bottom of the list motorboating.

Like Manse-and-Demesne Form, its most impressive characteristic is entirely in how it opens up fundamentally silly interactions with other mechanics.

[bleak hazel]

the others aren't exactly bad, but it's kind of a utility form

[velvet raft]

Yeah, it's all good stuff but it doesn't really feel SMA level until Oh Wait I Can Learn Every Evocation Now.

[bleak hazel]

the discount component is "yes, I will have two mote Five Jade Fury, most copacetic" because Five Jade Fury does functionally whatever the fuck you want it to do

[velvet raft]

"Oh wait I now have every supplemental charm on call for two motes"

[bleak hazel]

2m Red Jade is the most mote-efficient damage booster in the game outside broken bullshit like Divine Executioner's Stance

[velvet raft]

Love PAOC

I love that they took 2e's most boring SMA, and managed to make it extremely exciting without really changing anything about its vibe.

[tulip folio]

I like Games of Divinity Form. It's a silly form but a very funny one.

[velvet raft]

My favorite thing about GoD form is that it's addictive to watch.

Appearance-based penalties to attacks are also very funny.

[bleak hazel]

I'm in Ways of Exaltation, I'm in FMMF, I have an applicable WSAV, I spend 2 motes and punch with 11+5+3+2=21 dice @ TN5, whelm 8

even with Hail-Shattering Practice that needs an average of 9 motes to block assuming I roll 5 1s and 2s on the attack roll for them to haul-shatter

[velvet raft]

I'm not gonna lie, this was a motivating factor in how I developed Red Evening Sky's concept.

[bleak hazel]

admittedly your passive parry there is "only" 9 w/ stunt

be a redsid, make it a nice round 10

or be a purplesid, and go up to whelm 13 so you can punch out Tyrant Lizards with your normal jabs

there is one existing sid who has a big demon arm and fights with barehanded Crane and PAOC plus some other stuff, so she is probably doing this to people

now pondering what I'd actually use on a build that eventually transitions into becoming a one man warstrider

has to use the FMM tree, so I'd like an unarmed-only MA

or at least unarmed-OK

Bear is the same level of nuts as Righteous Devil and works amazingly with Sid Brawl, but doesn't really go thematically

[fierce star]

so the Abyssals game I'm in might be restarting/resetting itself/doing something else, as the GM realized that he is having trouble coming up with ways to challenge a full circle of even just essence two abyssals, so I might get to play my Soggy Angry Illiterate Disease Assassin build after all, just reduced to E1.

[bleak hazel]

Solaroid life, yeah

the optimal circle size for a clean solaroid game is generally agreed to be 2-3

above that and you get to the point where there are ways to attack that but they all invariably come across as scumbag bastard tactics that aren't much fun to play against

or just require so many powerful units in a small space that the combat engine breaks

[fierce star]

yeah we had uh. Ride apoc dusk, medicine apoc daybreak, awareness apoc day, I believe presence apoc midnight, and then me, sail apoc moonshadow

the ride apoc dusk had a zombie tyrant lizard, and between the lot of us we had three-ish big elite battlegroups, a bunch of followers, a big warship

some zombie hordes

[bleak hazel]

ah, that would do it, yes

[tulip folio]

At some point I do want to play a Resistance Apoc Dusk and pick up all the 'Chains from the armour' charms.

[bleak hazel]

Tyrant Lizards are not really acceptable chargen flunkies and the fact they have to be on the familiar list because "wow, you can start with a T-rex" causes some Issues

exalts can take them, but not if you gigabuff them with charms

Many Guys Technique remains the most powerful strategy in the game

[tulip folio]

...is a Unicorn a more acceptable 3 dot familiar power-wise? Pondering as the lunar witch I put together has one as sorta a lead-in to her later picking up the 'can make any fae a familiar'.

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah go wild, especially if you're using it as a mount and not rolling it into combat on its own with a stack of buffs

[velvet raft]

Very kind of the dusk to pick ride >_>

[tulip folio]

Honestly it's mostly just there to be a Cool Mode of Transport. XD

[bleak hazel]

like, one extra guy across the whole party and one battlegroup per War Enjoyer so they can do their stuff generally works, but if everyone takes the merit system to the logical conclusion a party is five solars, five deeb retainers, a tyrant lizard and every CGI orc from the Siege of Gondor

and that's just not a reasonable thing to simulate in one fight

[fierce star]

my biggest thing other than the boat was a size 3 elite drill battlegroup using lintha reaver stats + ghost traits for might 1

[velvet raft]

Familiars really need clarifications in a couple of areas, imo.

[tulip folio]

Yeah 'GM headache' was a large part of the reason I kinda looked at RiRi and went 'no, she's got the at-will zombie horde from her control spell. I don't also need more mooks'. XD

Speed Bonus +5 from a unicorn seems Real Zoomy. I think it's either the fastest mount about or beaten only by that artifact chariot magic horse.

[bleak hazel]

the main issue with big familiars is they a) they add a lot of clutter to fights and b) as a GM, it is considered rude to kill your players' cats, but they can go as hard as they want against your adds

[tulip folio]

That's one of the things I really like about unicorns as a familiar.

They don't Stay Dead.

They respawn if killed. XD

It's not immediate but if there's a timeskip they'll be back

That and 'Wait, you have TN 5 on inspire rolls? Christ, if your dicepool was more than 6 you'd be insane at that'

(Lunars can get that dicepool up to 8/10, which makes for some very nice social support by going 'Look at my horse, my horse is amazing')

But I'm rambling becuase it's too early AM.

[bleak hazel]

they're what I'd consider about right for a 3-dot familiar, yeah

although if I was given free rein on the merit list I'd probably hack down the sheer number of guys you can bring at chargen significantly

I apologise to those who want forty cats but I am imposing a one familiar limit

[tulip folio]

My general policy with familiars is...pokemon rules.

You can have as many as you want.

But you're only rolling one of them into a fight as an an actual combatant

Like I am freely going to admit when this Lunar gets 'can take Fae as familiars', she wouldn't really have many of them about for combat/she'd mostly keep them for flavour/non-combat help.

You don't really roll a Lorelai into a brawl.

But if you want a friend to take to a ball and help you just devestate the place socially? Well, now it's time to bring that tool out...

[fierce star]

"You have how many lorelai?" "Size two battlegroup. I'm a god-queen, give me a harem to lounge in."

[tulip folio]

Average Infernal

[bleak hazel]

if I was forced to run for a full circle of Exalts I would be strongly tempted to just ban familiars and retainers actually having in-game statblocks in scenes where the party was present, unless someone is a dedicated beastmaster

you can send your retainer deeb out with one of your battlegroups to hold a pass, absolutely, but he won't fight for you

(alternatively, he's the Young Dynast)

[fierce star]

I will say a zombie tyrant lizard beefed up with the full 'beef up my ride' part of abyssal ride was, uh

basically a walking, screaming, flying nuclear warhead

[bleak hazel]

the larger the party gets, the more a GM has to play hardball to prevent things being a series of undramatic stomps, and "Sidereal snuck into your castle and cut your dragonbloods' throat, you lose that merit and have no idea why" is very sensible in-universe but not an allowable play at most tables

[tulip folio]

A tool I often use when I run games where the players adopt every NPC in sight is to let players basicly 'spend' NPCs for the arc to remove problems. As they can generally trust their friend to be competent and useful and it lets them have a cool moment without slowing the game down.

If that makes sense?

[bleak hazel]

yeah, that's very solid

[fierce star]

"Miss Chou can you please keep that group of high society women distracted while we pull off this heist"

[bleak hazel]

especially if you're actually playing on the strategic scale, where having a giant army means that you can send bits of it under your fun NPC minibosses out to do stuff, and then we can zoom in and resolve a fun low-power fight while the PCs are elsewhere

I do think Exalted is meant to have rather less sanctity-of-character-sheet going on than Lancer or D&D, just because if you can't kill 'em and you can't take their stuff and you can't be sneaky at them you quickly vector the game into "well, if there's a problem we have the dawn murderblend it"

[tulip folio]

Or in the current arc I'm running for you guys 'Hey, some fucker is using Story Magic to bring the lunar army of Princess Kaguya to life. If only we had engineer friends to bring an aztec precursor starfighter back online long enough to blast them'.

[fierce star]

yeah ,lol

[tulip folio]

Also: Malifaux is a weird game to run. That sentence surprisingly makes sense in-universe.

[fierce star]

I love how gonzo malifaux can get at times tbh

it's very exalted/anima tier in gonzo levels while not being quite that level of like, pc power

at least initially

[tulip folio]

We did have a laugh that because Exalted draws on a lot of Chinese mythology, the dragon that one of the PCs is descended from in the malifaux game is also in exalted and she would have entirely different daddy issues in exalted.

[fierce star]

and yet daddy issues all the same

[spring lynx]

is there a single child of a dragon that doesn't have daddy (and/or mommy) issues

[tulip folio]

Nope. Doubly so if your dad is Ao Guang and he's still salty about how Nezha beat his ass.

[fierce star]

That's it my next character in any applicable RPG is going to be some form of half-dragon or dragon-descendant who actually has a good home life

this of course excludes the entirely of the dragonblooded splat in exalted but i'll figure something out

[winged swallow]

hrnnmgh divine lineage (devil-star)

they’re so gender..

[fierce star]

waaaait a minute

Devil-stars are towering beings of glittering, varicolored crystal, easily reaching 20 feet or higher. Beheld in aggregate they resemble a human skeleton with insectile features like compound eyes, chitin or mandibles, and vast razor-sharp wings. Looking at any specific component reveals its anatomy is disconnected, segments hovering barely apart. From just the right angle, they appear almost feminine in a strange way, like strange cousins to the Maidens. Around their waists hover shrunken stars, to serve as sustenance or vessels for their daughters. 

Astel, Naturalborn of the Void?!

[limpid badge]

ooooh

[prisma sun]

Is the sid book ouut?

[limpid badge]

exalted tzimitzimitl...

[bleak hazel]

No, we're just getting previews

Even Blade, Flying Guillotine, Cerulean Lute and a starmetal warstrider, plus spooky crystal eldritch abominations

so far literally none of this is usable with SMA except punching with Lute or doing some bullshit with PAOC, come on companion

[winged swallow]

i love.. giant alien crystalline parasitoid wasp women

[velvet raft]

Okay Devil-Star Heritage Sid sounds legit amazing.

Good excuse to take that one Eclipse charm from Heirs, too.

[winged swallow]

devil-starchild infernal..

[velvet raft]

Fuck that's so good.

[winged swallow]

i’m becoming THE Enemy of Heaven

[velvet raft]

It's not like the Primordials liked the devil-stars either.

[winged swallow]

yeah

“please stop eating the stars, we just had those put in”

[velvet raft]

Also, the trick is to have your devil-star child infernal be one of Mun Four's spawn who somehow ended up in/fused with a mortal.

Mun Four has parsitic wasp vibes already, this could work.

[winged swallow]

yessss

i figure the lifespan woulda been short if it were not for Exaltation

[velvet raft]

Oooh, good thought.

Human gets a devil-star laid in them, then gets exalted.

Enemy of fate pileup.

[winged swallow]

enemier of fate

[winged swallow]

which one?

[winged swallow]

SHINING DEVOURER STANDS AGAINST HEAVEN, ASCENDANT CASTE INFERNAL

LETS GO

it's great because you KNOW i can incorporate devil-star shit into devil body

[winged swallow]

mmmm illiterate, "wyld mutant", and..

hm

[velvet raft]

It's in the Forest Witches section, it's a supplemental Essence 1 charm that causes you to do aggravated damage.

[winged swallow]

ohohohooo

[winged swallow]

fucking GKS

[fierce star]

... Is there an explanation for why 'my native magical powers dont' work with my fancy martial arts' for splats that do not have charms that actually exist

[bleak hazel]

not a particularly convincing one, the usual handwave is something along the lines of "martial arts channel essence in very particular ways and just shoving raw Solar/Abyssal/Deeb power into the moves randomly means they don't work"

meanwhile, evocations are combo-OK in almost all circumstances and are even weirder

he says, looking at "automatically demolish anything in Short Range" on the new warstrider

castle wall removal service

[winged swallow]

festering rot?

[velvet raft]

Ye

Seems fitting for a devil star

At least if reflavored

[winged swallow]

hm, howmst we reflavor this

[tulip folio]

Entropy to go with the star stuff?

[wise ocean]

Gravitational stripping

[winged swallow]

??? (4m; Supplemental; Instant; Aggravated, Decisive-only, Eclipse; Essence 1): A decisive attack against a living character deals aggravated damage. If it deals any damage, at the end of that character’s next turn, unless he or an ally successfully treats the wound with an (Intelligence + Medicine) roll at difficulty (Essence), he suffers an additional level of aggravated damage, ignoring Hardness, and contracts infected wounds (Exalted, p. 235) without a chance to resist, even if he has Exalted healing. "infected wounds" brother my hand is falling apart at the molecular level

[bleak hazel]

you know, I would put that at 5 motes myself, that's kind of great

[winged swallow]

that can be Arranged

what do i call it though

[bleak hazel]

although that's just because of the infected wounds part, +1 level of damage on a delay + agg is perfectly reasonable for 4 motes

comparing to Smiling at the Damned over in Sids

diseases are weird

wait, they're morbidity 1, never mind

this is fine

you just willpower that if you are unimaginably weedy and have Stam 1 Res 1 or something

it's Major intensity where the storyteller just gets to start declaring botches for you because you are too ill

[velvet raft]

I would do it as just damaging the ontological underpinnings of the target.

Since devil-stars eat ontology.

[winged swallow]

yummy laws

gonna go hard with that one infernal charm

[bleak hazel]

I'm fairly sure that some infernal charm will just work for this straight up

sometimes I wish agg damage did slightly more useful things, but it is quite accessible if you want it, so I can perhaps see why it doesn't

[winged swallow]

yeah i agree

[bleak hazel]

with the addition of Infernals it might have two common target-types that it might concievably do something about

[winged swallow]

its use i guess is in like

long-term hunting someone?

[bleak hazel]

currently, short of "the side hit by this has to fuck off for a week", it's mostly for bullying Lunars

[winged swallow]

since it's harder to heal

[bleak hazel]

yeah, that can be a pain to actually do though

[winged swallow]

yeah

ultimately damage typing in exalted is just kinda weird

[bleak hazel]

the system doesn't make legging it easy, and if you hit players with it so they have to stop for two weeks they are liable to be grumpy at you (although IMO they probably shouldn't be, Exalted games should have more downtime)

[winged swallow]

true

i'm usin' training time stuff with my sidgame players rn, and it's honestly also made me rethink how i do stories for exalted? in a good way

i'm used to a lot of like "the problem is HERE and RIGHT NOW" which is fine if you don't use training times or whatever, but like

[bleak hazel]

both Sids in the game I'm currently in can just do agg out the box, so the one decent decisive hit I've landed this campaign was 8 agg on Octavian-possessing-a-deeb

five of which was nixed by crippling injury, so now the demon prince has a big cool scar over his destroyed eyes

[winged swallow]

also training times means the sorceror can like

[bleak hazel]

even that will only keep him wound-penalized for like, five days

[winged swallow]

Actually Do Workings

and they can all do Prophecies

[bleak hazel]

yeah, training times are glossed over a bit much in the rulebook because it has zero GM advice

[winged swallow]

annoyingly so

but

isn't a lot of shit in core, eh

[bleak hazel]

I think they're absolutely vital, because they're the only thing that gets DawnNightZenith zoom zoom murder murder to slow the fuck down and wait for the socialite/bureaucrat/crafter/sorceror/prophet/man there are a lot of things that take longer than a scene to do their stuff

I will probably be building my characters to have "thing for fighting, thing for social, thing for downtime" explicitly in future

looking at the healing rules, there's an interesting thing with agg damage where doing it to -0s doesn't do much at all, because they heal in a day anyway, but as soon as you get into -1s it's two days per bar and they're actually penalised if they don't wait

(then there's poor Lunar Georg, who has a sum total of three health levels better than -2 and for whom taking the hit I just dished out would leave him at -2s for two straight weeks)

[tulip folio]

Meanwhile the Sid has two levels of health: 'Dramatic but no effect cut' and 'fucking dead' with how many -0s they get relative to anything else 😛

[bleak hazel]

Anys Syn makes this quite funny, because it says she "graciously concedes" upon losing a -1 level or worse in a friendly spar

which means she's taken almost enough damage to kill a normal man twice over and is down to 4 non-incap levels

the Crimson Panoply of Victory fight arenas must go pretty hard

[tulip folio]

Woman Beaten Nearly To Death: "I guess you win."

[bleak hazel]

that probably is her normal friendly spar

fifteen minutes of Sid Craft duct tape and an afternoon siesta later and she's back

[tulip folio]

Clearly sids get so many -0s because other levels would require them to take a holiday

[bleak hazel]

this also makes me imagine someone used to the more classic anime-tournament-arc "people get hit, fly across the room and their magic life bar goes down 15%, they're fine" dynamic being invited to the Crimson Panoply Invitational and coming out shellshocked because he just saw someone's auntie rip a god's arm off, pin them and start volleying punches into their face like she's playing Gorn

I am sorry, despite the comically oversized magical weapons and glowing battle auras, this is not Rwby and you don't have a forcefield

unless you're WarstriderSid, who spent six months socializing with Karvara until he learned how to cast AT Fields and won't shut up about it

[tulip folio]

Alchemical: "I take offence at the idea I don't have a forcefield. I've got like 4 forcefield charms!"

[bleak hazel]

Alchemical also really doesn't mind taking almost any level of battle damage in the arena match

must be a popular sparring partner

[tulip folio]

You can Black Knight an Alchemical and as long as you drag them to the vats afterwards they're cool with it. XD

[winged swallow]

hmmm

eclipse charms to do devil-star esque communication..

but then i guess that's less like

having a charm that a devil-star has, and more like developing a charm to replicate what a devil-star does

you can tell i've never had to think about this before

[bleak hazel]

discussion on Exaltation conditions gave me the idea of "Lunar who was informed how Lunars work before Exalting, probably from living in a Lunar dominion, and really didn't want to be one"

[winged swallow]

luna: "oh this is gonna be so funny, watch this"

[bleak hazel]

forty-five seconds into the conversation with the mysterious lady in silver they realise what's going on and there's an exchange roughly along the lines of "oh wait nononono" boom, Exalted

local man who really does not like the Silver Pact given recruitment flyer

[fierce star]

https://tenor.com/view/no-no-wait-wait-gif-8174347161288218584

[dense verge]

Luna: "OK, how obvious can I make myself here before he realizes"

[bleak hazel]

you know that gimmick where parts of the image change every few seconds but it's always the bits you aren't looking at, so if you have tiny cuts to black frames between the images it's really hard to notice?

that, but with shapeshifting

sadly I have no idea how to make this a character I would potentially want to play after the moment of Exaltation other than my persistent desire to go gank Ma-Ha-Suchi for no particular reason

I don't know why, that guy just rubs me the wrong way

[winged swallow]

that's my husband, leave him alone. he's brooding and he's hot, and i ignore his previous edition variants.

[bleak hazel]

also he has a cool lair that I want to storm

my favourite MHS is actually the Terrifying Argent Witches variant, who is somewhat more obviously a terrible person than the current one but has more stuff going on

he has juice

they have a cool Raksi too, who I plan to take notes from for my Raksi if I ever end up involving her in anything

also the Moonkillers who are neat

honestly just a fun supplement, I like doing some syncretism here because the 3e Lunars also have much drip

like Sha'a Oka and his metal gear miniboss squad

[winged swallow]

sha'a oka my love

[fierce star]

I keep being tempted to port Tamuz to ex3 because he was my favorite lunar in ex2, but he's also extremely deeply tied into the concept of the thousand rivers stream project, too.

[tulip folio]

Alchemicals, Smugly: "Wow, a better society? Imagine if someone made that."

[fierce star]

Also unsure if he should be detraumatized or if his first age solar mate should still be the root cause of his psychological issues

[winged swallow]

hm.. i shall make her a crystal chameleon stylist

this is funny because she has crystal-chitin body-parts

:D

[tulip folio]

Crystal Chameleon is great.

[winged swallow]

i know i said ascendant earlier because it makes sense for being an outcast "mutant" who doesn't really relate to anyone else, but now i'm torn between azimuth and nadir

[bleak hazel]

I feel it's OK to have one Lunar Elder with direct personal experience of Solars being bastards, just as long as it isn't like 90% of the splat as in previous editions

[winged swallow]

hmm

ontolophagous venom...

ah i misread pattern venom

that's eclipse, essence 2

alas

i can keep that in mind for e2 though

[bleak hazel]

Pattern Venom is very mean, yeah

honestly for Divine Heritage I would probably go for three charms tops, so you've got agg-punch, pattern venom, free slot

I feel you want something floaty

[winged swallow]

oh yah?

[bleak hazel]

Tepet Vlad has his Ominous Hovering charm

which is high essence but also lets you skip all the prereqs to the usual flight stuff in Athletics

alternatively cook something for hovering a few inches above the ground that isn't quite so intense on the mote pool

[winged swallow]

ngl hovering above the ground, Marceline Adventure Time style

doesn't seem like it'd be too high essence?

like that's.. an e1 celestial-tier effect, no?