Exalted

[chilly sluice]

btw, to confirm something
I heard the Get and Liminal books are gonna be smaller than the other books?

[nova yew]

i like gets

[bleak hazel]

if they're doing the War on Heaven they're just boring nega-sids that have Sid themes in their entirety

[nova yew]

i like that

[velvet raft]

This is gets

[bleak hazel]

if they're telling Rakan to suck eggs and going off to do their own thing, they are not devoid of fun

[nova yew]

that sounds awesome

[bleak hazel]

yeah, but they could have just been More Sids, kind of a waste of a new splat

[nova yew]

do the Gets have a book yet?

[bleak hazel]

there's a reason, I think, that the two examples of Gets we have both totally blew off the War in Heaven and are just running around doing their own thing

nope

[dense verge]

gets do not have a book but they are present in Essence

[chilly sluice]

the only bits about them we have is from Essence

[nova yew]

im excited for em then

[bleak hazel]

in essence they are spectacularly overpowered

basically sids without any of the limiters on thematics or charm directness that stops them inventing "I warp reality to kill everyone instantly technique"

but that is unlikely to be how they are in 3e

[dense verge]

gets i divide into the ones that blew rakan's offer off to go do their own thing, either becoming mired in their own solipsism and trying to enforce their non-reality on people, or trying to figure out what exactly they should be. or Rakan's gets, who are The X-Men but a weird martial arts sect

[bleak hazel]

(for reference, an E5 sid in ExEss can devastate all of creation in five turns, no roll, no counter)

[buoyant summit]

Aren't Rakan's Gets more the Brotherhood of Mutants?

[dense verge]

you know what that's true

rakan is the kind of guy to shout TO ME, MY GETIMIANS tho

[chilly sluice]

I don't find Rakan's little rebellion entirely uninteresting, but I do agree I find Gets much more compelling focusing on their other stuff

[bleak hazel]

Rakan is fun, Rakan pulling his own splat that are just "sids, but EVEN COOLER" out of his back pocket entirely to have Sid vs Sid fights kind of leaves me cold

Sids already have rivals in [begins listing every category of entity in creation]

[nova yew]

djkfahsdkf

so true

[buoyant summit]

Sids themselves moment

[prisma sun]

Rakan should be a get

[dense verge]

misc i want you to know after going through Essence's companion book with you i think Quicksilver Hand of Dreams is the funniest and least moral SMA. i need someone to make a Dragonblood out of a dream they had and force them into existence, for a lark

[nova yew]

"when you visit yu-shan you'll never want to stop beating sidereals to death with your bear hands"

[chilly sluice]

I find the "glitch in reality, imposing a past that never was onto things for their own ambitions" part of Gets to be the fun bit about them

[nova yew]

this was a typo but actually imagine lunars

[buoyant summit]

Lunar that knows Bear style

[nova yew]

EYAH

YEAH

ASDKJUHASKDJH

[buoyant summit]

FUCK!

XD

I wasn't quick enough

[bleak hazel]

also they're going to have to finesse the lore for them quite heavily to make them not seem like a bunch of insane terrorists because right now it seems to be "bad luck, you were exalted from a road not taken, try destroying the world about it and maybe that will stop more gets existing"

which is presumably not Rakan's actual pitch but it's all we have

[buoyant summit]

I think, from my limited setting knowledge, Gets conceptually shoulda been the Wyld Exalt

[chilly sluice]

funnily, there was one of those too 😛

[bleak hazel]

I am looking forward to that one both for silly reasons and for practical ones

dream-crafting and domain expansion would suit many of my characters

[dense verge]

imagine, ethical soulsteel

[chilly sluice]

but Dreamsouled didn't make the cut

[buoyant summit]

Inform me

Fuck

[dense verge]

made from the souls of dream people

[nova yew]

ethical pain metal seems hard

DO NOT

ASDKHASKJDH

[dense verge]

This Cannot Go Wrong

[chilly sluice]

they were one of the other apocryphal Exalted, the Dreamsouled

[bleak hazel]

I am going to be a grognard here and say that I think Exalted is better when not EVERYTHING has an exalt type attached

[dense verge]

karen Quicksilver Hand of Dreams style lets you make the magical materials in a dream and actually have them in reality

[nova yew]

i agree with you 100%

[bleak hazel]

the fae are fine as their own wierdo thing, IMO

[nova yew]

...but from the little bits ive seen gets seem cool

[buoyant summit]

But muh faexalted...

XD

[dense verge]

bringing back my getimian thoughts ```been thinking about getimians and this bit from a destiny 2 lore book
"Think about it. Do you mourn the uncreated? Do you grieve for those who were never born in a nation that never developed around an ideology no one ever imagined on a continent that never formed? No!"
ive half come around to gets, but in the sense they make far better antagonists than PCs since ultimately they have the temerity to go- "No. This world is wrong. It is wrong not for any reason of ethics or ideals, but for the fact that it is not my world. And to that end I will blot my ink on the page to turn you right, to correct that person that you are, that life that you've lived."

and i find that clinging to a world that wasnt to be both tragic and and incredibly selfish in a strangely compelling way```

[chilly sluice]

they had powers of shaping their dreams, and turning them into reality to an extent, along with some Wyld shaping too

[bleak hazel]

if it was up to me, Exalts would be Solar/Lunar/Sid/Abyssal/Infernal/Exigent/Deeb and that's it, I don't really vibe with any of the apocryphals or the Gets/Liminals

[marsh garden]

sorry what

[nova yew]

really the issue is i think not every pc needs to be a type of exalted but

[bleak hazel]

Gets and Liminals I actually like less than the apocs because they just feel like stealing space from Sids and Abyssals for no apparent reason, although Liminals have a fun space as "terrestrial-level spookyghost"

[nova yew]

alas

[bleak hazel]

Gets on the other hand it's on sight

[nova yew]

oh i straight up do not care about liminals

[chilly sluice]

I have not yet seen anyone who actually likes Liminals lmao

which is very funny to me

[nova yew]

gets are interesting and exciting to me kinda

i do not care about liminals rn

[bleak hazel]

they have a charm that causes a disaster that can hit up to the scale of a Direction, it costs exactly a fifth of their mote pool and takes a turn to use

[marsh garden]

damn, when i was reading Adversaries i liked Gets :(

[nova yew]

they have failed to compel me

[bleak hazel]

so they fire it left/right/forward/back/down and all five directions explode or suffer megaplague or whatever

[nova yew]

gets have succeded in intriguing me

[marsh garden]

liminals just seemed like "what if fuck you abyssals go to hell"

[nova yew]

i love that

[marsh garden]

"this is my space now"

but gets being like

The Consequences Of Being Siderealed

powerful enough to un-delete themselves

[chilly sluice]

it just feels like Promethean but in Exalted

[marsh garden]

was really compelling as a framing

[nova yew]

gets compel me

[bleak hazel]

they aren't the consequences of Sids though, they're just from Roads Not Taken

[dense verge]

gets don't un-delete themselves, they straight up never existed

[marsh garden]

that's not what the 3e book said

[dense verge]

they're Potential Man

[marsh garden]

at least, not my understanding

[nova yew]

in any case

i shall head out

[bleak hazel]

which, as far as I can tell, are inevitable unless heaven stopped planning any destinies at all

in which case reality starts fraying at the edges increasingly quickly

[dense verge]

see you karen!

[nova yew]

got writing i wanna do and this is distracting me ;-;

[marsh garden]

it explained them as being "people with destinies that were snipped by the heavenly bureau, and should have existed but don't"

problematic heroes, queens who would have upset the status quo

and so they were Made To Never Be

[fierce star]

The only apocryphal exalt I jive with is the hearteaters and purely because literally like four paragraphs of text turned Aurora into my favorite incarna

[chilly sluice]

Hearteaters are great

[bleak hazel]

this is not the case, they are alternate destinies that were considered but not selected, because they would be impossible to make come about, or were politically difficult, or caused too much damage, or what have you

[marsh garden]

which is not their existence being forever unfated

[chilly sluice]

of the apocryphal ones, they are definitely the most interesting IMO

[bleak hazel]

they are almost literally potential man too, because in their alternate lives they do great and heroic things as mortals because the plot is written for them, that's what the destiny said would happen and nobody's self-determination or outside-fate actor existed to mess it up

a lot of these are discarded because they would be too hard for heaven to implement and trigger failed-destiny backlash

this is the primary reason Yu-Shan is Hard Choices Corruptionland rather than just dictating utopia forever

(there are many other reasons)

[lament owl]

So
I have posted my take on this before but:

I really like all of the apocryphal exalts, which include gets, because giving other big celestials rivals the same way solars have seem really cool, and I haven't been into this game for long enough for change to be bad. I only got in on 3e. I got really emotionally invested in heart eaters, I can see the shape of something cool with umbrals and dream souled

However: I do like non exalted things being cool, which I haven't seen much in 3e
My conclusion however was this: the devs, want to explore new parts of the setting and make up cool new shit to explore with their own creativity besides just rehashing previous splats, however they do not feel comfortable adding splats that are not exalts, presumably because this is Exalted the game about Playing Exalted the Exalted Heroes with Sparks Of Exaltation, so playing Exalted but not playing Chosen isn't something they want

[bleak hazel]

There's no "these should have existed" clause, it's "heaven could have decided to push in this direction but didn't", rather than gets being "the true path if those dastardly sids and gods hadn't intervened". Gets explicitly do not exist until their exaltation spins them into existence from a discarded draft in which they were the protagonist.

[velvet raft]

Angel is a cool superspy from outside of the last remaining city and she has a dramatic backstory that we see flashbacks to … all of which is fiction. Her childhood home was a soundstage in the tunnels under the city, there is nobody outside of it, it’s all bullshit

There is no Angel

She’s a fiction

But so is everything else

[fierce star]

So the big thing is in ex2 there were options for playing non-exalts. Fae had full player-facing writeups. So did Dragon Kings and Mountainfolk, among the pre-human races. There were extensive rules for playing heroic and enlightened mortals, godblooded, demonblooded, etc.

[marsh garden]

the big o is so good

[dense verge]

gets exist on the cutting room floor of heaven, the draft pages of a novel, a snipped thread

[fierce star]

A lot of the issues with the apocs including gets and lims is that the original two main devs for exalted wanted to have all of their possible special snowflakes and heavily both overpromised and underdelivered

but these things were promised, so the current devs are stuck with them

[dense verge]

dragon kings do have rules in Pillars of Creation for Essence, but, that's not main 3e

[velvet raft]

And at the moment I realized that Angel is a Getimian, all was revealed to me

[bleak hazel]

also if we didn't have Gets and Lims, we might be onto actual supplements for Exalted right about now rather than still 3-4 years of splatbooks away from even having all the exalts

[lament owl]

oooooo

[dense verge]

also yeah liminals and gets were kickstarter promises iirc so those need to be fulfilled

[fierce star]

(also I say fae had a full player-facing writeup and splatbook for them but graceful wicked masques is an outlier and shouldn't be counted, but Iam anyway because I've done it before)

would I do it again, no,but , you know

tee hee

more playable than ex2 sids

[velvet raft]

What I really hope is that Gets, in their fictionality, have ways to gesture to the fictionality of all Creation, maybe throw in some Wyld flavoring

[bleak hazel]

also most of the player splat rules for non-exalted beings were fucking awful

[dense verge]

wait misc i just realized, dragonblood jeff that i made from a dream is like, a really shitty getimian

[chilly sluice]

for me I also just get a lot of Excrucian vibes from the Getimians

[bleak hazel]

like, would get handily rinsed by your average deeb bad

mostly they just made building NPCs out of those types of entity really hard

[fierce star]

oh, sure, they were bad but ex2 had a multitude of sins

they were at least acknowledged

[bleak hazel]

Graceful Wicked Masques was a really nice book with fun lore in until you looked at any of the mechanics ever

sorry Jenna Moran but that one was a bit of a miss

[velvet raft]

Oh did she write that one?

[fierce star]

yep

[chilly sluice]

in part at least AIUI

[velvet raft]

Huh

[lament owl]

tbf that is a skill issue not an idea issue

[velvet raft]

It revealed a lower-bound issue with the system

[lament owl]

probably a good idea to make sure nothing you make playable is weaker than the deebs yeah

[velvet raft]

Where it became really difficult to write effective player-facing mechanics for things below a certain point

[bleak hazel]

I might be wrong actually, Moran is not listed in the credits for GWM

[velvet raft]

Well then

[bleak hazel]

might have been in there anyway, the documentation for books this old is patchy

[fierce star]

oh, huh, thought she w--ooooh

she was ex1 fair folk

[bleak hazel]

ah, that would be it then

[fierce star]

so GWM built on the stuff she'd written

[bleak hazel]

explains why their lore is so Moran-shaped but the mechanics aren't

[velvet raft]

Oh my god

[nova yew]

i one time said to ru "maybe jenna wrote this part" and she replied "i know she didnt because if she did it would be mechanics i could half respect"

[bleak hazel]

and yeah, fae, dragon kings, spirits etc. were all in the situation where they were Even Shittier Deebs unless they took particular broken combos, and they couldn't be a giant army of infinite celestial-grade entities hanging out everywhere so it was hard to make them better

even 3e deebs kind of run into this

[velvet raft]

And deebs in 2e were in a problematic state

[bleak hazel]

later terrestrial exigents got a little boost over deebs and as such they don't have the handful of charms 3e deebs do that are just worse than an excellency

[spring lynx]

but the scarlet empire still exists in 3e!

https://tenor.com/view/fozzie-muppets-waka-gif-5564088

[velvet raft]

Unrelated: so Infernal bureaucracy is about 50% be gay do crimes by volume

[dense verge]

the liminals also make sense in the framework of 2e where they're Terrestrial Abyssals, but in 3e terrestrial exalts get to be actual characters, so, they're at a loss for their niche

[bleak hazel]

I am kind of hoping that QHOD in 3e keeps its old Gossamer Understanding gimmick where its form weapons are "things you made in your dreams"

[velvet raft]

And about 50% be gay encode systems of law

[bleak hazel]

Gossamer Understanding is not compatible with Sidereal Craft Charms—they craft fate, not dreams—but it can be used with those of other Exalted.
except without this bit because it's dumb

[velvet raft]

Shit's crazy

[lament owl]

wait really dragon kings are weaker than deebs?
I excpected them to be at deeb level at minimum

[bleak hazel]

they were pretty pathetic

[fierce star]

idle question, not ot interrupt our ongoing deliberative musings, but I'm homebrewing up af irst circle demon because kimbery has a great derth of them, y'all in here mind giving the fluff writeup a read to see if it feels approrpiately 'yeah this could existin malfeas'?

[bleak hazel]

although so were 2e deebs

in Essence they're terrestrial level but the power curve is almost completely flat in Essence

[fierce star]

DKs are supposed to be roughly slighlty-below-deebs individually, very-below-deebs if the deebs are grouping up, but they have Wierd Crystal Bullshit to push above their weight

is th elike, general niche for them

(this is entirely my understanding of it filtered through decades of interacting with exalted in ways healthy and unhealthy)

[bleak hazel]

for reference, the 2e deeb perfect defence failed against attacks enhanced by magic

AKA "I spend 1m on my excellency"

in the perfect-or-die edition

[velvet raft]

I AM TRYING NOT TO SCREENCAP EVERY CHARM

[bleak hazel]

the fluff said "this sucks, but deebs prize it anyway because it's the best the poor little bastards can do"

this was about consistent with all of 2e deebs

they accidentally gave them a flawless solar/lunar detector because they made one of their charms so bad it suffered stack overflow and became amazing

[chilly sluice]

something something, you have failed me for the last time

[fierce star]

ex2 was a horrible time to be anyone but a solar

[lament owl]

huh

Honestly I feel like you could have made them pretty stronng if you wanted, especially because they are super rare now(to my understanding)
you could have gotten away with making them like, "weak celestials/strong terrasterials but with very linear charm trees that look and act more like martial arts than anything"

I only have 3e dragon king lore and what I could glean from the wiki

[fierce star]

and honestly solars weren't much better

[nova yew]

apparantly dragon kings also do hang out in the underworld between reincarnations

and uh

well theres a lot of them between reincarnations

so hey maybe some ghost dragon kings get fucking WILD

[bleak hazel]

there are a grand total of 864 celestials including gets, so you really don't need many of them to exist to handily outweigh the entire celestial host if they're that strong

they are, at most, deeb strength

[lament owl]

someeone in the underworld did invent evil dragon king charm trees, the wiki did tell me that

[fierce star]

(creation-bound celestials, to be specific)

[bleak hazel]

400 lunars, 300 solaroids, 100 sids, 64 gets, [unspecified] alchemicals, yeah

[fierce star]

alchemicals georg, etc

[bleak hazel]

maybe round creation up to 900 because they have a few stray alchs and celestial exigents

but you get the idea

[fierce star]

Erithel-Syrn, The Inverted Broodmothers

Any Demon that dares may dive into Kimbery's depths. Those who catch her attention are remade as part of her brood. The rest are raw materials for the Erithel-Syrn, the so-called Inverted Broodmothers. These semi-aquatic demons have a humanoid torso, usually but not always feminine in shape, with a head with long, flowing hair often braided with shells and corals from the Demon-City's seas; their face, however, is upside down, with a mouth where one might expect a forhead, and eyes where one would expect a mouth. They always appear gravid, often grotesquely so; their legs have been replaced with the tendrils and tentacles of a sea anemone.

They always float upside down, with their face, therefore, appearing right side up and their tentacles trailing off into the sea or sky. It is their duty to catch detritus--organic or not--and recycle it. For demons who catch Kimbery's eyes, they are summoned in great numbers to bless their new sibling with their shared mother's touch. Otherwise, they simply scavenger on what meat survives Kimbery's acid, creating more of themselves or other first-circle demons of Kimbery in their factory-wombs.

The average Erithel-Syrn has a motherly, caring personality; but one that is eager to see their children leave the nest and make their own way. They care for their siblings to the point of self-sacrifice; it is not unheard of for an Inverted Broodmother to allow others of Kimbery's first circles to feast on their still-living flesh should they express hunger. The only thing greater than their love is their rage; when they or someone they care about is percieved to be in danger, they respond with overwhelming force and tend to fight to the death. Fortunately, there are always more Erithel-Syrn; these fecund creatures live and die in such droves that some of Kimbery's fathoms are choked with their acid-resistant corpses.

Also how's this sound for the fluff of a first circle demon?

[lament owl]

yeah but I thought the contagion hit them really hard and most of them kinda got deleted

[bleak hazel]

yeah, but the contagion hit everything really hard

the dragon kings are in that category of entities who are "cool, but nowhere near as cool as the Exalted Host, which rolled them at the peak of their power"

I would put your fighty DK ochilike around Fae Cataphract level, which conveniently is about where somewhat combat-inclined deebs are

this is maybe harsh of me, I think they're a bit better in Essence, but Essence explicitly does not care about such things and just goes "everyone is PC grade"

[lament owl]

Well I guess what I am trying to gesture at is they probably don't have to be on that scale if you didn't want them to be, because to my understanding the exalted host partially wins fights like that through sheer versatility that my impression of the dragon kings suggesteed they lacked

[marsh garden]

oh sick, they get the same one abyssals have!

i fucking adore this charm

[fierce star]

the dragon kings were also in a state of great spiritual malaise after the divine revolution, to be fair

given that their patron deity had literally abandoned them for weak squishy fucks only good for prayer

[lament owl]

Yeeah

[marsh garden]

oh, also

does jenna moran still do any work on 3e or is she entirely concerned with her own stuff now?

[nova yew]

i think she worked on the 3e corebook but...

[lament owl]

I dunno

I guess my big idea here is

"Adding cool playable shit to the setting that isn't exalts might include adding cool playable shit to the setting that doesn't lose a fistfight to a dragon blooded of equivlent power"

[marsh garden]

oofte

[nova yew]

i dont think shes still doing exalted stuff

[fierce star]

She wrote for core atl east

[nova yew]

she's workin on nobilis 4e rn

which

im hyped for

[marsh garden]

wait what

is that a nobilis joke or something

or for real lmao

[nova yew]

no

there is no meme

she is working on 4e

[lament owl]

Nobilis 4e
I think karen made a typo

[nova yew]

...

bruh

[marsh garden]

ah

[nova yew]

fasdfjkadshfkdas

GOD

DAMNIT

[marsh garden]

LOL

[nova yew]

I HATE MY LIFE

[marsh garden]

OKAY IT WAS A NOBILIS JOKE

BUT YOU WERE THE BUTT

[velvet raft]

I don’t believe she’s done significant work on the line since 1E

[nova yew]

AUGH

[marsh garden]

that's a shame

moran my beloved

[nova yew]

im going to (remembers to be kind to myself) im going to shoot a hostage

[marsh garden]

but i can respect wanting to just do your own shit when it's as cool as jmoran's

[fierce star]

Counterterrorists Win

[velvet raft]

Exalted is somewhat off-theme in terms of what she does these days

[marsh garden]

yeah

[nova yew]

but no yeah nobilis 4e is something im quite hyped for

[velvet raft]

Ye

[marsh garden]

more of the navel gazey meta esoterica

[nova yew]

i dont know how much of a role she had in 3e even though she was listed as a writer

[lament owl]

like my mental image of dragon kings before this convo was basically

"Slightly below celestial tiers who have good essence pools and shit but rather than attributes or abilities they just have a bunch of martial arts type thigs"

and I was like

"Oh that is a really cool way to do something strong but not an exalted"

[nova yew]

yeah that seems cool

[marsh garden]

but i think that part of what fascinates me about exalted is the potential for nazel-gazey esoterica bullshit

within its framework

[nova yew]

very valid

[tulip folio]

Reads well to me. Creepy.

[marsh garden]

so jenna bringing more of her spice to it for later books would be lovely

[nova yew]

jenna brings a certain kind of spice

[tulip folio]

If we go where essence put them, which isn't certain - A 'brain works good' DK is at terrestial teir, while ones doing their Spirit Channeling Priest thing are Celestial Teir.

[lament owl]

Huh
Weird

[fierce star]

riiiight, essence added those psuedo-exigents?

[nova yew]

oh neat

[tulip folio]

Jadeborn are in a simular place.

[nova yew]

that seems acceptable

for cool dragon people

as in they are dragons who are people

[fierce star]

well they're closer to dinosaurs than dragons

[nova yew]

they have dragon in the name

[tulip folio]

Where an unenlightened Jadeborn is like a terrestial, while an Enlightened Jadeborn is 'Oh right, these fuckers made the twilights worried they were going to not be the coolest crafters about'

[nova yew]

youre telling me theyre not dragons?

[fierce star]

is a t-rex a dragon? (yes)

[nova yew]

they dont have wings????

[bleak hazel]

essence also levels everything that isn't a celestial up significantly, so in practice they're all about the same

[fierce star]

some ofthem do

[velvet raft]

They’re dinosaurs

[nova yew]

theyre...

[fierce star]

they have a lot of variants based on where they like, hatched

[nova yew]

wh

i feel like im having an existential crisis

theyre named dragon kings ;-;

theyre...

theyre dragons

rigth???

[fierce star]

okay an important thing to note with dragon kings is that the namea ctually comes from oWoD

[bleak hazel]

they're dino people, yeah

[nova yew]

im going to kill another hostage

[fierce star]

Counterterrorists Win

[velvet raft]

They’re the chosen people of the primordials

Strong enough and enlightened enough to make a respectable showing

[nova yew]

no i know that part theyre the first mortal type of thing
and from my little wiki crawls they actually sided with humans during the big thing
and they have a reincarnation thing n all that

i know that part

i know all that part

[lament owl]

Ok when y’all say essence is it the same essence I am thinking of when you say essence as a person who got in way more recently

[fierce star]

Exalted: Essence, the rules-lite version of exalted

[lament owl]

Or is there a second book also called essence

[nova yew]

but i assumed they were dragons and not dinosaurs based on the name

[lament owl]

Ok good yes

Just checking

[velvet raft]

This is why, in my heart, Theion is Godzilla

[fierce star]

they're called dragon kings because let's be honest here, t-rexes are dragons

[nova yew]

they have feathers so y'know what i agree

[marsh garden]

tyrannosaurs are basically dragons yeah

[fierce star]

the unconquered sun's normal form literally used to be a four-armed anthropomorphic tyrant lizard

[tulip folio]

They also have Crystal and Biotech. With stuff like Crystal Clubs that Shoot Lasers. At least, in 2e.

[fierce star]

resplendent in golden and crystal armor

[nova yew]

so theyre cool dragon people

[chilly sluice]

okay that's pretty funny

[nova yew]

they just dont always have wings

thats fine

im good with that

my sanity and worldview is maintained

[fierce star]

wielding spear and macahuitl and horn and cup

[nova yew]

fuck yeah

[marsh garden]

used to be?

not is?

[fierce star]

the dragon kings were his chosen people! :D to the point where in ex2 their charms ran on their virtues.

Topple: well humanity is now his favored people, so his form is human

[marsh garden]

boooooooo

get better taste fuckass

[nova yew]

join the underworld

together we can kill all humans

[marsh garden]

return to lizard

[nova yew]

....eventually we're killing the dragon kings too but

[marsh garden]

i'm playing an abyssal!

[nova yew]

thats not important

yeah!

kill everyone

regardless of political beliefs

[marsh garden]

i have no thoughts on this, i'm just here to listen to my boss

my boss says kill all humans but only kind of

half-ass it a little

[tulip folio]

Good news: The Dragon Kings are very amenable to killing people.

[marsh garden]

this is why we love lizards

[lament owl]

My wiki trawl did suggest that you could do “abyssals with a dragon king/dragon king ghost friend”

Creature of darkness dragon kings ❤️

[tulip folio]

Conqy loves him some human sacrifice and so his chosen people, the Dragon Kings, gave him plenty.

[nova yew]

yay

[tulip folio]

You know, before he sided with humans

[marsh garden]

fuck what's this from?

i recognize it

[tulip folio]

There's an entire group of Ghost Dragon Kings.

[marsh garden]

it's intimately familiar

[nova yew]

disco elysium

[marsh garden]

but i cannot place it

thank you

oh hm.

[fierce star]

yeah I think one of major religious issues was like

[bleak hazel]

while I am usually joining the war on heaven on the side of heaven, the Abyssals are also cool

[fierce star]

they wanted daddy conky back so started sacrificing even more people

[marsh garden]

do y'all have places i can look (subreddits or specific artists or whatever) for characters with fantasy prosthetics?

[fierce star]

and conky was like 'guys no, ugys, please, look'

[nova yew]

i wanna make my sid oc at some point

[bleak hazel]

I love playing people committed to destroying the world in which they keep all their stuff, it's always funny

[nova yew]

my abyssal chick is fucking awful as a person and has so few redeeming qualities

i cant wait for her to somehow become a better person

[tulip folio]

Also to be frank: They kinda got screwed over by the divine revolution.

[nova yew]

its going to destroy her

[tulip folio]

They were pretty big deals beforehand.

[nova yew]

my abyssal becoming at all kinda a better person is going to involve breaking her and i cant wait

[tulip folio]

Basicly: There is a limited number of Dragon King Souls.

[bleak hazel]

mine runs a cultivation auction house and has only had to do a little bit of underworld colonialism to run his trade empire that literally decorate their capes with magpie feathers

[tulip folio]

They reincarnate but can't Make More Souls

[bleak hazel]

he does not have an inferiority complex towards house ragara at all stop asking him about it

[nova yew]

AHHAHAHA

[tulip folio]

And the Primordials nuked 90% of the dragon kings during the divine revolution.

[marsh garden]

oof

[tulip folio]

Killing them so hard it killed their souls too

So that's 90% of the dragon kings not just dead but will never be again

[velvet raft]

I’m very pleased with Here With The Chains; I feel like I finally made an Abyssal renegade who feels distinctively like an Abyssal

[nova yew]

yeah no shes great

hey gk

[velvet raft]

Yo

[marsh garden]

so what i'm hearing is that we need a dragon king book with plot hooks for creating souls

[nova yew]

do i have permission to ramble to you about whatever iron chains is doing in her game at some point

cus shes funny

[marsh garden]

to return the world to glorious lizardry

[velvet raft]

Sure

[nova yew]

hell yeah

[bleak hazel]

Crimson Rain Augurs Fell Tidings is normally a very personable dark lord despite being really evil, but whenever he gets Bleak Expiationed he goes a bit more sauron and starts sabotaging his enemies way more brutally

[nova yew]

gosh if only there was a circle of magic dedicated to the manipulation of souls

[tulip folio]

They tried to do the same with the Jadeborn but you can't really...do that...with Jadeborn. Autobot, for all his depression, makes things that last. Jadeborn Souls are Extra Durable and thus they survived it, unlike the dragon kings.

[nova yew]

wow

[fierce star]

IIRC Dragon Kings are also immortal unless killed by violence or disease, so they breed slowly and tend to take their time doing things

[lament owl]

However: the contagion

[tulip folio]

Yeah. Dragon Kings are notably - Not sapient when born.

[bleak hazel]

I have considered running him in a mixed circle by saying "yeah, he's trying too hard to See The Wonders Of The World Etc. despite the fact that as an abyssal they are all ashes in his mouth, so he's come along with the adventuring party while trying hard to not look like a 6 foot 4 sorceror lord"

[marsh garden]

poking again for this, if anyone has suggestions for artists or spaces i can grab art from (and ideally comm later), i would greatly appreciate it

[tulip folio]

They grow into sapience over time as they're forced to use their brains and thuse their brains develop super good

But that means with most of them dead, most of the new ones have no one to teach them to be smart

[lament owl]

Abyssal who isn’t a reneagade but has convinced their death lord that them joining this mixed circle would be a good idea actually

[fierce star]

no garuntee it'll have proper sources, but I usually use safebooru, if you're familiar with searching image boorus

[tulip folio]

So there's still a decent number of dragon kings about, they just don't know they're dragon kings rather than just big lizards.

[fierce star]

pretty much every pre-human race is massively tragic

[tulip folio]

And the remaining smart ones are trying to find a way where a small minority can teach the majority of them How To Brain Good

[marsh garden]

fair enough, safebooru's probably the right call

thanks

[bleak hazel]

Crimson is loyal to the Silver Prince but only under the condition that he can ratfuck all his rivals in Skullstone

[tulip folio]

Not the Greys, they're just Assholes!

[bleak hazel]

if they tell him he can't murder that bastard on that island he wants he's fucking right off in his mobile manse

[fierce star]

np; a lot of people I know use pinterest too but I've never been good at curating pinterest searches

[lament owl]

… are those straight up little gray men or

[tulip folio]

Yep!

[nova yew]

;-;

[fierce star]

yeah one of the prehuman races were basically little gray men, they were autochthon's favored race before they tried to enslave him and he turned them all into soulsteel

notably I will specify this is ex2 fluff and may not be canon to ex3

[lament owl]

Damn

[nova yew]

HE DID WHAT

[marsh garden]

i would rather die than use pinterest

i am not good at sifting through genai slop

[tulip folio]

Autocthon: "Aww, look at these guys. They're physically weak but smart and they use tech to overcome. I love them!"
Greys: "Hey boss, want to get in the Soulsteeling Machine?"
Autocthon: "I am the concept of machines, what made you think this would work?"

[chilly sluice]

made their tech turn on them and turned them into soulsteel

[marsh garden]

and i do not want to sift through genai slop

[nova yew]

"ethical soulsteel" my fucking ass

[fierce star]

entirely fair, topple

[chilly sluice]

they are why there is deposits of soulsteel in Creation

[lament owl]

“Opps thought they could test me, changed them into a new state of matter”

[marsh garden]

they were trying to turn him into soulsteel, so

[fierce star]

being fair not all the soulsteel in autochthon is from them

a lot of it is mined out of autochthon's own soul, which does grow back

[nova yew]

i do not believe in ethical soustell i feel like it is by definition unethical

question

[fierce star]

you are correct for 99% of it

[nova yew]

how is the bits of his soul feeling inside the soulsteel?

[chilly sluice]

it is the suffering metal

[nova yew]

how are they doing in there

[fierce star]

probably curious about all this torment and stuff

[wise ocean]

https://www.youtube.com/@Tree.lancer @marsh garden I think this artist has some plant prosthetic stuff in some of his art? It's been awhile

[marsh garden]

oooh

[fierce star]

autochton is the sort of person to get into BDSM solely for the education of the game

[marsh garden]

lovely, thanks

[nova yew]

ghdskjafhadskf

[fierce star]

He's not like, INTO it into but it's a chance to learn something!

[lament owl]

God I wanna work on exalted homebrew now kinda but shit is daunting

[nova yew]

"its okay the bits of his soul experiencing eternal heartbreak are fine"

[chilly sluice]

there is of course also the soulsteel the Silver Prince sources from "volunteers"

[nova yew]

"the permanent nervous breakdown steel is doing just great"

[chilly sluice]

(some of them do actually volunteer)

[fierce star]

permanent nervous breakdown is already autochthon's default state tbh

[tulip folio]

All of autochon is experiancing eternal heartbreak. Some of it's just mobile while doing so 😛

[nova yew]

and now you can use that as a hammer

[fierce star]

also being hoenst I feel like bits of autobot soul in soulsteel would love to be turned into something useful

[bleak hazel]

this is why Autochthonia should switch to my ethically produced dream soulsteel instead

[fierce star]

like, you can explicitly empathize with and soothe the souls stuck in soulsteel

[nova yew]

maybe

maybe

i believe you

[bleak hazel]

made from real dream people who definitely don't have qualia

[fierce star]

that's a whole sidebar in abyssals

[nova yew]

the sidebar concerned "you can torture them more if you want" but actually maybe im wrong

[nova yew]

ASDHKSAJHD

STOP

[bleak hazel]

I love sidereal martial arts

[nova yew]

oh

yeah its right in there

[marsh garden]

i'm sure at least one person in the history of skullstone has been the right kind of weird fucked up masochist to enjoy being soulsteel

[nova yew]

you can learn to soothe soulsteel

[fierce star]

yeah

[nova yew]

neat

[fierce star]

and like, the great maker's soul yearns to make and by making be made

[tulip folio]

Also: Man, 2e Jadeborn had some bullshit tricks.

[chilly sluice]

it is everyone's patriotic duty to become part of a sickass soulsteel warship

[fierce star]

... great

[lament owl]

aree there any greys still around

[fierce star]

thanks allie, now the silver pirnce is going to be Chairman Yang ot me for the rest of all time

[tulip folio]

They could just Make Magical Materials by the cubic meter.

[fierce star]

(this is not a negative, just unexpected)

[tulip folio]

That was kinda unbalanced

[chilly sluice]

I was literally also just thinking about that as I wrote it lmao

[tulip folio]

We've not seen any but I'd 100% believe there are some.

If I ran them I'd go 100% into the Alien theming.

Give them Legendary Size Tripods etc

[bleak hazel]

print me more starmetal

I do not want this to make a silken armour warstrider, I promise

[nova yew]

so true

[lament owl]

OOOOO

lean into the War Of The Worlds of it all and give them really bad resist desisase rolls

[fierce star]

hmm, waht's less ethical, soulsteel or pre-ex3 starmetal

[dense verge]

one of the villains in my ongoing pbp is a first age solar that wanted to make ethical soulsteel. he's dead. he's very, very dead.

[fierce star]

Fluffy: that's actually already canon

[dense verge]

the problems he has made are not.

[bleak hazel]

probably still the soulsteel

[marsh garden]

wait, what's starmetal?

[lament owl]

WOW

[fierce star]

they were noted to be weak to disease and poison

[bleak hazel]

the starmetal only requires you to gank the odd guy and the god is then dead and gone

[marsh garden]

and what was it pre-3e?

[chilly sluice]

dead gods

[lament owl]

Sidereeal favored material

[fierce star]

Starmetal was the corspes of the gods

[marsh garden]

ahh

[bleak hazel]

2e starmetal was made from the corpses of gods, so in order to get more of it they would shanghai court gods and kill them

3e starmetal just forms in heaven as part of the operation of fate and falls to earth

[fierce star]

like, you killed a god and the corpse fell to creation. Sometimes sidereals would 'arrange' for more superfluous gods to get capital punishment applied to them fo rpetty crimes because they needed more metal.

in 3e it's--yeah, as misc says

[bleak hazel]

2e heaven was very much written as BAD AND WRONG AND STUPID for daring to dislike Solars, that was part of it

[fierce star]

essence drifted into the firmament, turned into an asteroid and fallen back to creation

[bleak hazel]

"they're so bad at bureaucracy they kill their own coworkers for weapons"

[tulip folio]

Poor Filtration: Unlike other Automatons, the Ereta'een Harvester is not immune to disease or airborne poisons.

[chilly sluice]

either way, starmetal is the rarest of the magical materials

there's not a lot of it, and Sids really want it because its the only material they are resonant with

[bleak hazel]

sids are not great at artifacts

[tulip folio]

God that fucking sidebar of 'Heaven respects mortals more than dragonblooded because a mortal might some day be a Real Exalt' lives rent-free in my mind.

[bleak hazel]

probably to balance out the fact that they are stupidly ridiculously good at martial arts

[fierce star]

let us all raise a toast to that as bad as some parts of ex3 are

at least it isn't ex2

[bleak hazel]

hear hear

[bleak hazel]

almost all the 2e bits I want back are like, really easy lore and vibes tweaks

it's not like I am forced at gunpoint to write a bunch of liminals into my game

[tulip folio]

...dammit, I have Ponderings for what I'd do with Ereta'eens.

[fierce star]

the only like

[tulip folio]

But I'm already doing up the Jadeborn Quick Characters...

[nova yew]

in our game our gm is ignoring liminals and exigents

[fierce star]

major fluff thing i'd bring foward from ex2 that isn't like, a single character or some vibes being changed or whatever

[nova yew]

a decision i am not that broken up about

[fierce star]

is enlightened mortals being a thing again

[bleak hazel]

whereas 2e literally had as main writer sentiment "if you're playing a non-solar, your first thought should be asking what the solars are doing"

[fierce star]

and tha'ts already basically implied post-original devs

oh and mayb emake thaumaturgy an actual thing worth remembeirng agan

[marsh garden]

honestly i like this sidebar characterization for at least some heavenly factions, just blithe contempt because they're not as powerful

[nova yew]

i do appreciate the dragon blood book for also encouraging you to do like

school drama

school drama game except youre all playing in the awful empire and youre all elementally aligned demigods is like

dope

[lament owl]

Also I am gonna choose to headcanon the Niborian League as working like I thought the dragon kings would work

They get like 10 "Songs" and each one is a mostly self contained charms package akin to a martial art, instead of being attribute or ability based
But they are like celestial tier

Like honestly the more I think about it the more I realize the reason I didn't like "essence based exalts" in the exigent book is that they were exalts and their charm trees had no in universe division

[tulip folio]

...notes down 'do some Ereta'een quick character stuff after I'm done with the jadeborn stuff'

[bleak hazel]

heaven doesn't really work that way though

for one, there's a bunch of deebs who live and work there

"heaven looks down with unmasked contempt upon [XYZ]" doesn't fit as a sentiment because Heaven barely agrees on anything

[nova yew]

so i havent read the sid book but
im given to understand

[bleak hazel]

you'd get like 50000 gods who had a working relationship with some deeb or other, at least

[nova yew]

heaven is currently trying to file a memo to decide on what their unmasked contempt is for again

cus they lost the paperwork for what theyre supposed to hate

am i getting that right?

[bleak hazel]

not really

[nova yew]

aw

ill get my jokes right next time

[fierce star]

heaven doesn't have time for unmasked contempt because they're too busy trying to keep everything from falling apart while also pushing their own political things

now there probably is a god of unmasked contempt

maybe he hates DBs!

[bleak hazel]

"fuck the solars" was never heavenly policy, it was the Sids getting together with a few Lunars, a few Solars and a fuckton of dragonbloods to Solve The Godking Problem

[tulip folio]

...dammit, I have fun Ereta'een ideas.

shakes fist at people

[nova yew]

the god of unmasked contempt is trying to decide what to hate today

wAUGH

hello iki

[fierce star]

shit I kinda want to make an exigent of hte god of unmasked contempt

charms who are like

[nova yew]

what the heck is an ereta'een

[bleak hazel]

the god of unmasked contempt is a very nice ~~human ~~being and wears a mask to work

[nova yew]

tell me of it

[fierce star]

that's the in unvierse names for the greys

[nova yew]

i see

tell me of your ideas iki

[chilly sluice]

Chosen of Contempt would presumably be doing similar stuff to all the Abyssal charms that deal with negative intimacies

[nova yew]

hes always frowning underneath his mask so he doesnt take it off

[bleak hazel]

something I like about 3e heaven and even 3e sids is that while they still have their factional divides, it's also very possible to just do a straight up Doing Da Job campaign where you don't directly headbutt it

[nova yew]

i love heavenly office workers ❤️

[bleak hazel]

and just run around trying to keep reality together and the horrors in their various corners

[nova yew]

genuinely kinda really love it

[fierce star]

there's office politics but you still have a job to do, etc

[wise ocean]

exigent of the god of hatred who has no combat-related charms and instead are all travel- and knowledge-based because they're personally insulting every single person in Creation in alphabetical order

[nova yew]

theres a quota

[tulip folio]

My thoughts with the Ereta'een is to make them very...Stargate. So like, they're advanced tech but it's more 'staff that shoots plasma' than 'Laser Rifle'

[fierce star]

like the martians from war of hte worlds meets the goa'uld?

[nova yew]

oh yeah!

[bleak hazel]

grey necrons

[nova yew]

grons

if you will

[bleak hazel]

(well, necrons are already grey but you get the idea, they're big on superscience that looks like ancient egyptian magic)

[lament owl]

Alright I could see that
...
Give them solar resonance

where they can just use whatever artifact they want really weell

like their own charms aren't great, besides maybe them having pretty good craft

but they are great at just stacking a bunch of big artifacts and relying on evocations

maybe they even have a warstrider-like for their tripods

[tulip folio]

-0x4 -4x2, Incapacitated

Essence Barrier: The -0 health levels of the Ereta'een Marine are provided by its armour and are restored after a minute of no HP loss.

The HP I've given a basic Ereta'een.

They are so squishy without their tech to save them

[lament owl]

yeahhhhhhhh

Ikiryo your making me wanna do stuff, but I don't know what I wouldd wanna work on

maybe like
just make an artifact or something for now

[tulip folio]

The other thing I'm doing: They have a remarkably high mote value for a guy of their essence level but they don't respire motes in combat. So they can't run neutral, the tank is always emptying.

As these guys can't channel essence naturally. He's got a Literal Battery of motes he's using.

[fierce star]

Motic Science!

points!

[tulip folio]

Which means he can really spam his charms to start a battle

But the moment he runs out, he's completely empty

[lament owl]

ooooooo

[tulip folio]

I want a bit of 'Okay, you can tell why these guys were a bit scary but you can also tell why they're a previous failed attempt, not the successful final result'

[lament owl]

Big mote pools but no regen is also good for attuning artifacts which is cool

[bleak hazel]

also means the "optimal" way to run them is probably "I commit 5000 motes to scenelongs" but conveniently as NPCs that doesn't matter

[tulip folio]

I'm also replacing some basic competency with charms to make them have to use the pool.

Feats of Strength: 5 Dice (Can perform Strength 1 Feats)

Moteic Hydraulics(2m+; Supplimental; Instant, Essence 1) The Marine adds one automatic success to a feat of Strength per 2 motes spent, to a maximumof 5 automatic successes. It increases its strength for meeting the minimum to perform the feat of strength by the number of automatic successes added.

'I close and lock the door'
'Fuck, spending motes'

[marsh garden]

oh my god that's so mean

[buoyant summit]

Is there being 64 Getimians a fucking computer joke

[bleak hazel]

no, they're I Ching themed

so you get the 64 hexagrams

[buoyant summit]

Ah

[lament owl]

a stack of geitimians

[buoyant summit]

Also, I have to ask

Are any Exigents like

'Good'?

[fierce star]

define good?

[buoyant summit]

Their charmsets feel extremely limited

[fierce star]

morally, ethically, mechanically?

oh, mechanically

Sovereigns absolutely fuck massive amounts of hell yeah

janest is solar-tier

[lament owl]

Janest is busted yeah

[fierce star]

architects are maybe a little weak but youcan fix them easily by giving them the lunar stat spread

those are the only three exigents i'm super fmailiar with

[lament owl]

I don't know the system well enough to judge the puppet onen

[bleak hazel]

Archis can get neutral MA, which is a big boost

lots of action economy benefits from getting rid of Terrestrial

[fierce star]

yeah, it just costs one of your city attributes. Admitteldy that's probably a fair trade, but

and you still can't combine native charms with MA charms

[buoyant summit]

Since I do not have the Infernals draft I humbly ask what a Horizons Caste is xD

Cuz the third player in the Monday game is a Horizons Infernal

[fierce star]

Infernal Zenith

[buoyant summit]

Gotcha

So not necessarily a combat-spec

But somewhat likely

[fierce star]

or, wait

not zenith, uh

[merry arch]

twilight

[fierce star]

that's ascendent

they're twilights, yeah

Caste Abilities: Horizon Castes choose their Caste Abilities from Bureaucracy, Craft,
Investigation, Linguistics, Lore, Medicine, Occult, and War.

apologies for the mixup

[coral wraith]

So probably a Sorcerer type

[buoyant summit]

Goooooot it

Okay

[prisma sun]

How fun do you think Exalted would be as a full mortal game

[fierce star]

with the ex3 assumptions?

uhhh

i hope everyone's playing a sorcerer if they want to engage with like, mechanics greater than rolling dicepools, stunting and using willpower

[tulip folio]

I am Making Shit Up.

Ereta'een Marine
Once the chosen people of Autocthon, the Ereta'eens betrayed his trust and attempted to enslave the primordial with their mastery of motic science. Few of them survived his wrath, fleeing beyond the bounds of creation in their great crafts. Now, they have returned. Flickering lights in the night sky and disappearances among the mortals herald their return, determined to understand the nature of primordial creation in the designs of vivisected gods.

An Ereta'een Marine stands five feet tall, with an entire foot of that height granted by the dark soulsteel armour he wears. He bears a staff that crackles with black lightning, able to scour his foes from his sight. Pitiless and cruel, each Ereta’een Marine is sure that he is the harbinger of judgement for his people against creation, heedless to the truth.

He is little more than a tool for the Direction Lords; the Ereta’een leaders, survivors of Auocthon’s wrath and masters of Amalantrah Workings. He will die fighting their war against the primordial they seek to bind in chains.

[fierce star]

:D

hell yeah

[buoyant summit]

There is now also an Azimuth caste

Who is doing Survival Primordial for 'sandstorms and protecting my people'

And I have joked that my character is a Bene Gesserit

[fierce star]

y'all just playing DuneGem

[tulip folio]

But yeah, I hope they seem fun as 'Oh no, a little facist grey is attacking'. XD

[fierce star]

I'm getting Destroy All Humans! vibes and love it

idle question do you think having things to defend other me + having impervious sphere of water on all the time in combat would be enough defenses for a sail primordial sorcerer infernal or should I invest in dodge charms

[buoyant summit]

It's a game titled "The Doom That Came to Gem" so

Yes

[spring lynx]

doom? in gem? you don't say

[coral wraith]

what's happening in gem

[fierce star]

it's a day ending in Y, so it's exploding

[spring lynx]

eh, sometimes it implodes

[fierce star]

enitrely fair

[tulip folio]

sometimes it 'plodes in entirely incomprehensible directions!

[buoyant summit]

An Arajana who Exalted as an Endings Sid, an Azimuth Infernal noble's son turned desert vigilante, and Horizon Infernal scientist killed by Gem's invading army are rapidly approaching it

There is Also a Dawn There

[tulip folio]

Actions
Feats of Strength: 5 dice (may attempt Strength 1 feats), Read Intentions: 6 dice; Senses: 8 dice; Threaten: 8 dice, Stealth: 6 dice, Resist Poison and Disease: 2 Dice

For that Ereta'een Marine.

[chilly sluice]

what isn't happening in Gem

[fierce star]

lol, strength 1 feats and that resist poison and disease

good senses/threaten though. well, 'good'.

[tulip folio]

Their entire setup is 'this guy is shit but comically overgeared'

Attack (Soulsteel Staff): 8 dice (Damage 11, minimum 4); Tags: Reaching

[marsh garden]

the intj stare

[tulip folio]

'I have an artifact weapon statline and some of my physical stats and skills might occuasionally reach the lofty height of 2!'

[fierce star]

hah

[coral wraith]

Yippee

[tulip folio]

Which does make for a fun contrast with the Jadeborn. Who have 'Exceptional but not insane' gear and real skills. An unarmed jadeborn mercenary is still going to dumpster the average human soldier without slowing.

These guys...not so much.

[buoyant summit]

There is one fucking Solar in this game I feel so bad for them

1 Dawn, 3 Infernals, and a rogue Endings

This poor bastard

[tulip folio]

Purge Prioritization (10m; Simple; Scene-Long; Essence 1) The Ereta'een Marine chooses one enemy within sight. The Ereta'een marine and all Ereta'een allies add 2 Overwhelming on withering attacks and add an automatic success on decisive damage rolls against that enemy. This effect ends if the Ereta'een Marine is incapacitated or if this charm is used again, including by the Ereta'een Marine’s allies.

Points at a Guy "Kill Him!"

[nova yew]

GUARDS

SEIZE HIM

[nova yew]

HAHAHAH

[fierce star]

I have only spent 6 bonus points on merits on this character

this is a new low for me!

oh wait shit languages

[marsh garden]

lmao

[fierce star]

also the GM says as an infernal with the bargain with mara initiation I should probably take mara as a mentor lol

[limpid badge]

Yah true

[tulip folio]

They're so bad without gear but they've got a lot of it and it's pretty good

[fierce star]

I think you're missing an ignore in sensor augmentation

[buoyant summit]

Oh yeah do Sids have a Nebulous Magic Bullshit Bolt attack like Solars, Deebs, and Abyssals do?

[fierce star]

yes, it's in uhhhh

I thiiiink lore as well, let me find sidbook

[coral wraith]

Sure do

Occult, Unweaving Method

[fierce star]

oh, occult, yeah

I cna never remember if unweaving method is lore or occult, thet wo charm trees tend to blend togther in my head

[coral wraith]

It is notable for attacking with pure mental stats and it can be enhanced with other charms

[tulip folio]

Oh yeah

[coral wraith]

Also just ignore armoured soak :)

[tulip folio]

That reminds me: I should list how much soak is armoured on quick cahracters

[buoyant summit]

part of me wants to reconfigure things...

[tulip folio]

There we go

[limpid badge]

doing disarm gambits for my fucking life

[limpid badge]

Yah, for Solars it’s Solar Bolt, Abyssals get a necrobolt, and Deebs getting a bending blast

[tulip folio]

100% valid.

Also noted this on Motic Core:

Motic Core: Ereta'een Marines do not respire motes during combat. Without their armour, they have no charms.

As all their charms are Evocations (In fact, most of them are slightly modified Gunzosha Armour Evocations)

[dense verge]

the three infernals are taunting the solar with their functional bones

[tulip folio]

But yeah, I hope they looks like Dangerous Little Assholes. They're not the most skilled but with that high overwhelming there isn't an armour that can entirely blunt them and they've got a fair bit of essence pool to burn through before they run entirely empty.

[fierce star]

A small battlegroup of them would be a pain, I love 'em

[marsh garden]

are the solar & sid ones in lore like abyssal (and where's deeb? occult? also lore?)

[limpid badge]

i think so?

[tulip folio]

...isn't the solar one in like melee or something?

[prisma sun]

Brawl or Occult iirc

[tulip folio]

Ah, there it is. Blazing Solar Bolt is A) Kinda weird and shit B) In Melee.

[marsh garden]

lol

[coral wraith]

lol.

[coral wraith]

sickbones.png

[tulip folio]

Like mate...I'm not going melee 5 if I want to Shoot Lasers at people.

[limpid badge]

ohhhh solars.... your bones so sick

[tulip folio]

Also: This is not worth 5m, 2i, 1wp for 1/scene

[buoyant summit]

MELEE 5????

E 3?

[limpid badge]

anyway use a solar rewrite

[buoyant summit]

1/scene???

fuck is this?

<XD

[marsh garden]

w-why is it 1/scene and costs 2i?

[coral wraith]

And you spend anima to increase range

[marsh garden]

and wp

[coral wraith]

Fuck off

[buoyant summit]

That's cursed

[lunar magnet]

Ah, 3e core

My beloathed.

[buoyant summit]

oh also the Sid one is actually in Occult

Cuz it's unweaving your fate

[coral wraith]

i said that yeh

[marsh garden]

i wish the abyssal one was in occult

[tulip folio]

Meanwhile, the much more functional Abyssals

[coral wraith]

L o r e

[marsh garden]

i also wish it was with a mental instead of dex but like

i understand

dex is The Combat Stat

[coral wraith]

I mean Sids can do it

It's confusing

[marsh garden]

and also the everything else stat, because exalted is an old game

sids are made for magic bullshit tho

[buoyant summit]

Sids' one is fully mental ye

[marsh garden]

and also have a dozen stat replacers, yeah?

as one of their assorted gimmicks

[buoyant summit]

Yep

I reconfigured my Sid to be our party sorcerer as a like, tertiary thing, am I going to hate myself with this stat spread?

[tulip folio]

Alchs are dex by default but can make it Perception with a stat replacer, which is nice as most of their ranged charms are in perception.

[marsh garden]

waow

[tulip folio]

They also get the Big Fucking Siege Weapon mode

[marsh garden]

yeah i was really hoping to pick up a good ranged tool without engaging with my 1 whole dexterity

but uh

all of the ranged spells go "charisma/manipulation or fuck off"

and crypt bolt is, alas, also dex

[coral wraith]

I mean if you stick to rituals and out of combat spells without a roll you'll be fine

[tulip folio]

Siege Devastator Mode would be 20+Essence base damage, which is a hell of a hit. XD

[buoyant summit]

I am not a combat sorcerer, god no

[marsh garden]

i'm basically just in necromancy to wait for shadow circle

[coral wraith]

A lot of the meaner social spells need Manipulation or Charisma tho

So uh

[buoyant summit]

Manipulation 4 baybeee

[marsh garden]

so i can kick my feet and make big fuckoff siege monsters

[coral wraith]

That'll help

[marsh garden]

i'm so fucking sad that The Worms is manipulation 😭

[tulip folio]

Social characters can be useful in combat with social stuff alone. Willpower is an important resource for a lot of combat charms.

So forcing people to spend willpower to deal with you trying to convince them shit can drain their resources

[marsh garden]

please, just a smidgeon of melee to my melee

[tulip folio]

Also: It forces them to spend motes on social defences even if they've got scene-long physical defences

[buoyant summit]

I mean I'm not really making a dedicated social character

I'm making A Fucking Liar

She Is Only Good At Reading Bitches And Lying

[coral wraith]

[bleak hazel]

Peacock Shadow Eyes in Lunars is good if you want sorcery to put the mental kibosh on people

Unsure if manipulation or charisma off the top of my head

[coral wraith]

Peacock Shadow Eyes is exceptional yeah

[marsh garden]

actually, question: i haven't really looked at battlegroup bullshit yet, if i took the skeleton army spell does it rely heavily on War to supplement it?

or is it fine as combat utility on its own

[coral wraith]

Int or Manipulation + Occult

[bleak hazel]

Skeleton army is a pile of shit soldiers that need War for buffs, you mostly use them as fodder and as manual labourers

[coral wraith]

vs Resolve

[bleak hazel]

Second circle has the good shit there

[coral wraith]

Rhi is rolling 7 dice base, it's not the worst

[bleak hazel]

hundred shade breath is a really good battlegroup in a can that can be reflexively ordered with Occult

so it's everything a non war character needs for an honour guard

[fierce star]

one day

one day, i'm going to make a character that is just John Q Exalt with his daiklaive and shiny armor

[marsh garden]

i'm in the awkward spot of wanting to dick around with magic but having none of dex, manipulation, or charisma, so all of the spells i wanted are kind of mid

[fierce star]

and not invest roughly eight million everything into merits

[bleak hazel]

HSB is the one thing my Sid wants but fundamentally can't have

It goes gangbusters

I'll have to settle for Octavian

[marsh garden]

i have pigeonholed myself in several ways such that a few things in each given necro initiation are extremely thematically resonant, but a few other things are uh

[coral wraith]

Feh

[marsh garden]

dire

[coral wraith]

Second circles are way better anyway :p

[marsh garden]

also! how do you gain access to more shaping rituals, if that's possible?

[coral wraith]

You get one per circle you know

So once you hit Shadow you'll have two

[marsh garden]

do they all have to be from the same initiation, or is it possible to dip out with a merit or something?

[fierce star]

you can jsut dip out with whatever makes sense

[coral wraith]

Oh you can dip out freely, it's all flavour, yeah

[fierce star]

it's kind of a 'hey GM, I want 'x', can we arrange for it to make sense'

[coral wraith]

The path to magical power is uh

Non linear

[fierce star]

I have just enough free BP to make sail (my primordial lmao) and occult (I'm a sorcerer) 5 after merits....

which means i'm stuck at willpower 5.......

[buoyant summit]

For example I'm going with Scarred By Nightmares

Which in my characters case is actually 'I am haunted by premonitions, especially since they saved me from dying with my family'

[marsh garden]

this is fair, but especially in a game like exalted i'm trying to hew as close to Strictly Defined RAW as possible until RAW says "go talk to your gm lol"

[fierce star]

RAW is 'go talk to your GM'

[marsh garden]

being my first campaign with the system and my first campaign with the GM, pushing the envelope feels like bad form

[buoyant summit]

Pushing the envelope is kind of

The game

[marsh garden]

yeah

[buoyant summit]

in my limited experience lmao

[marsh garden]

nonetheless

i will shy away until forcibly coaxed out

[tulip folio]

Corebook!

[fierce star]

I might ask my GM if I can still be a mermaid without serpentine and with just fins 3

and just like promise not to jump

[marsh garden]

serpentine?

what book's that from?

and why're you not keen on taking it for fissh?

[fierce star]

Lunars

[limpid badge]

i think that's fair

[fierce star]

and because it's four dots for 'you're immune to prone but you can't jump', which isn't bad, but

four dots is a lot

[marsh garden]

damn

why is it 4 dots for that?

[tulip folio]

Also: I'm pretty sure a mermaid has 'flopping about on the ground' as an option, so prone feels like it's still on the table.

[fierce star]

A lot of mutations are rather overpriced

Fins 3 kinda already covers 'flopping about', I treat all land as difficult terrain

[limpid badge]

i think you can just do fins 3

and then still jump with slapping the ground real hard

[fierce star]

like in theory I should have unusual hide 1-2 and gills 3 as well

but i'm sail primordial so i'm just gonna use charms for the latter

[tulip folio]

...I'm also realizing it's legally required for me to make the Ereta'een Elite Guy a full on Psychic Asshole. XD

[fierce star]

yessssss

... you know somewhere else you could take inspo from for these lil fuckers

Red Alert. Yuri's faction.

[buoyant summit]

oooo, Mirror Nemesis Vizier sounds really good when I get to Celestial circle

[tulip folio]

I was thinking of basicly stealing the rules for Automation Override Array for going 'Your thoughts are mine'.

As it's mean and nasty but not like so nasty people can't do shit. People can flurry their own actions alongside the dictated ones etc

[fierce star]

lol

[tulip folio]

Alternatively: Steal the gaze rules the cockatrice has.

[marsh garden]

how long does the average ex3 combat go on for? does that vary too widely by player and enemy builds to give an average, or is it relatively consistent?

[tulip folio]

Also: Calling it the Ereta'een Mastermind. XD

[fierce star]

:D

It's pretty varied, toppled

I've seen anywhere from 'over in a single exchange fo blows' (1-2 rounds) to upwards of 10 rounds, depending on size and setup

[tulip folio]

Also: Man, I'd forgotten that Alchs eventually get a full upgrade to Automation Override Array that lets them use it on non-machines, as long as you've ever inflicted a psyche effect or derangement on them.

[fierce star]

Alchemicals get some nasty social spy stuff

well, nasty stuff in general

they're the people's champions, whether the people want it or not* (*they will want it)

[buoyant summit]

you know

I think being the sorcerer spreads me too thin

[tulip folio]

Psychic Dominator
Cost: 10m, 1wp; Simple; Psyche; (1 + extra successes) turns; Essence 3
The Ereta'een Mastermind makes a difficulty 3 gambit to take direct control of an non-mindless being within medium range, rolling Psionics against its Resolve. If she succeeds, she takes control of it for its next (1 + extra successes) turns.

On each of the targets turns, the Alchemical may force him to take an action of the Mastermind's choice, although it can’t force Exalted targets to use magic. If he wishes to take another action on his turn, he must flurry. He can flurry actions that would normally be incompatible, like two attacks, and compelled actions never count as his attack or movement action for the round. 

If a compelled action would violate one of an Target's Major or Defining Intimacies other than a tie of obedience granted by binding a spirit, it may spend one Willpower to refuse. The Mastermind must take a miscellaneous action on each of its turns to maintain this control. If it doesn’t do so, he acts freely on his next turn, though this Charm doesn’t end.

'Nice Blood Ape, I'll take it'

[fierce star]

you don't need a sorcerer in every party, to be fair, rhi

[buoyant summit]

Oh I just realized something fucking beautiful about my character

[fierce star]

it's a useful toolkit but it takes some investment

[buoyant summit]

She doesn't know how arcane fate works quite fully

So she has this fantasy of crumbling Rankar's imperial powerbase

[fierce star]

Do you feel like Mommy is an acceptable specialty for Presence

[buoyant summit]

And revealing that she, the last Arajana, is behind it

And she reveals herself

And Rankar just goes 'Who are you?'

[fierce star]

pfft

[buoyant summit]

And the entire plots reasoning, of getting personal, lasting revenge

Where Rankar knows it's her that casts him down to Hell, just

poof

[feral cipher]

I don't know why I decided to flex like this on this god

[buoyant summit]

l m a o

[chilly sluice]

it's important

[buoyant summit]

are you just fucking playing Ainz or something

[chilly sluice]

Derp is a rich evil skeleton, yes

[buoyant summit]

Based

Fucking Based

[marsh garden]

sorry to ask so many questions, but - at E1 this charm is basically exclusively for hitting str 7 feats, right?

[feral cipher]

had to look it up but yes essentially

[marsh garden]

since it's less efficient than spending motes on your excellency unles you're using it on a str 5 challene, at which point it's the same?

[nova yew]

somethings wrong with him

[nova yew]

i doodled derp's pc actually!

could've been improved but yeah

he's a freak

[marsh garden]

or is it like. assuming you have strength 7 from whatever, and you use this against a strength 5, it gives you (1 base + 4 dots because 9 effective strength) dice?

[marsh garden]

this man has something very obviously wrong with him

i respect it

[buoyant summit]

Amazing

He looks like that one guy from One Piece but with a sun motif

[feral cipher]

the 'hair' is soulsteel and gold beads

[buoyant summit]

https://tenor.com/view/one-piece-brook-brook-one-piece-skeleton-afro-gif-17914286872705169827

[nova yew]

i would not know who that is but

yeah

[lament owl]

Karen's doodles of our PCs are all very good

[nova yew]

soulsteel and beads

[nova yew]

LMAO

[nova yew]

eeee thank u ;-;

[buoyant summit]

Am I wrong????

XD

[feral cipher]

it's my evil fucking artifact crown

[lament owl]

our other pc with a prominent artifact

[nova yew]

its sick as hell

[marsh garden]

it makes you look like you should be wearing a GWAR shirt

[buoyant summit]

Oh, my Abyssal has her own artifact

It's a ragebaiting sword

[feral cipher]

This is a ragebaiting crown

[lament owl]

Broken Ivory Dirge Resonance is using Huskflayer from the abyssal book

[feral cipher]

This is a tweaked version of the Nemesis Cuirass - so now it's Crown Of The Nemesis and it does its bonuses from people hating me instead of me hating them

[buoyant summit]

The flavor is that the souls trapped in the sword's soulsteel join in as heckling laughter or jeers as the wielder insults someone to distract them

[feral cipher]

Incredible

[buoyant summit]

This is a story-driven evo as well

Cuz I used a Distract to help our Dusk land a killing blow against a gigantes ghost king who personally fucking slagged me off

[fierce star]

Assuming you're str 5 already yeah, but as you get other sources of increasing your str equivalent it gets better. Dunno how many are native to abyssals though

[marsh garden]

just the one that i'm aware of, but it scales

so it only gives bonus dice if it makes you beat a str threshold, as opposed to if you already do?

[buoyant summit]

the stunt that inspired this evocation

[lament owl]

shoutout to the fact exalted lets you spend half your merit budget on a single item that is gonna give you a tree on par with your normal combatt tree probably

[marsh garden]

lol

half your merit budget?

[buoyant summit]

look

sometimes it's worth it

There is a 5-dot artifact reaper daiklave known as stormcaller

It is ridiculous

[feral cipher]

what else are you gonna blow merits on smh

[buoyant summit]

It has a lightning demon trapped inside it

You unleash a storm when you draw it, do a bunch of storm shit while in a fight, and as a coup de gras dramatically sheath your blade and just

cast a fucking Kirin from Naruto

[lament owl]

you get 10 dots worth of merits(15 if you have instutional backing but those are more selective)

My Scythe is made from the spirits of an entire city+a nephwrack forged into a weapon of gore and vengeance

and it costs 5 dots worth of merits

[marsh garden]

ah fair, i keep forgetting that the abyssal base is super not the norm

with 8 free bonus dots

[lament owl]

well I am an abyssal but I don't count bonus dots as real-

[marsh garden]

lol

...i know exalted is The Swords Game, but i'm shaking my fucking fist at this

[buoyant summit]

lol

[coral wraith]

lmao

[tulip folio]

This is the interference of the God of Swords being in charge of other weapon gods

He nerfs his underlings

[marsh garden]

wait is this real lore? is a god of swords big up

[tulip folio]

Yes

[marsh garden]

I'm gonna fucking eat him

[tulip folio]

He's statted in sids

He's also one of the most corrupt guys in yu Shan, a city roughly 50% corruption by volume.

[marsh garden]

new character: iron jaws eating every sin

sole defining intimacy: suffer not the sword

I'm gonna get that motherfucker

[buoyant summit]

You know ur doing something right in Exalted when you start sounding like fucking Dracula Flow

[lament owl]

Warning: He is Essence 7 and pretty locked in

[prisma sun]

Y'know it really would have been funny if I gave Creature one sole intimacy and that's it

and have it be "Defining: I am the Supreme Creature of All Creation"

[buoyant summit]

https://tenor.com/view/anime-dxd-gif-13300617

[marsh garden]

WE DO NOT FIGHT FOR JUSTICE BECAUSE IT IS EASY, BUT BECAUSE IT IS HARD

[coral wraith]

You're thinking of another god actually

[prisma sun]

I didn't actually see Tang was Essence 7

[marsh garden]

this except he's making the locked-the-fuck-in face all the time and not just when he does the bite

[coral wraith]

Which is his superior Wun Ja

[buoyant summit]

topple I'm fucking dying

[coral wraith]

I don't see much about Tang being corrupt, he's more just overly eager and not a terribly good bureaucrat

[buoyant summit]

This is Tang btw

He's also constantly having a slapfight with the Bureau of Tools over knives

[lament owl]

scary guy

[marsh garden]

bro's out here playing dnd 5e

he can make two attacks in a round

and that makes him the best fighter on the block

[buoyant summit]

topple my lungs can only handle so many bangers

[coral wraith]

Principle of Motion is a very common spirit charm actually

[prisma sun]

Wun Ja is at least corrupt for reasons other than just personal greed

[coral wraith]

Even Blood Ape McGee has it

[mighty rover]

gilgamesh beat

[tulip folio]

Major Principle: Bribery, nepotism, and favor-trading are the way things get done.

It's as strong as his intimacy towards swordsmen, as the god of swords. XD

[buoyant summit]

imagine if that shit was an Eclipse charm

[marsh garden]

alas, it doesn't say Eclipse, so when i eat his bitch ass-

same brain

[buoyant summit]

l m a o

l m a o

[prisma sun]

She's right though

[lament owl]

this is his ONNLY ECLIPSE CHARM

[prisma sun]

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

[coral wraith]

Lolol

[buoyant summit]

god what a dogshit charm

[marsh garden]

at difficulty 3

bruh

why is this a roll

and not just an automatic application of the fucking intj brain blast