Exalted

[fierce star]

probably corrupted words as control spell?

[buoyant summit]

🦢Also my own Faeblooded Sid took it and the desire to play a dynamic duo is somehow rising even further lmao

[fierce star]

ID why are 90% of your character sorcerous martial artists

[wise ocean]

corrupted words is a classic

[fierce star]

because it's cool ID

fair enough ID

[buoyant summit]

lmao

[fierce star]

(also because most of my characters are lunars or alchemicals)

... okay technically my most recent lunar is a necromantic martial artist

her control spell is blessed dead fools

who doesn't want to party with the dead?

[buoyant summit]

lmao

🐰I'm homebrewing Quicksilver Hand of Dreams for Maeve to use if/when the game I'm running gets to E3

[fierce star]

she was a mortal immaculate exorcist who followed the Intou heresy, so her method of exorcism was less 'get thee behind me, back into lethe with you' and more 'look, your family will be fine, you're causing them more stress than help at this point, what can we do to help you? Have you considered moving on? You don't have to, but it is an option if you're at the end of what you can manage, there's no shame in it.'

and also punching ghosts

sometimes a ghost just needs punching

honestly I do enjoy how much less monolithic the immaculates are in ex3

you've got the realm's Order, lookshy's Faith, the Intou Heresy, the Pure Way Heresy, and that's just the ones that get full writeups

[tulip folio]

There's a lot less 'they exist permanently lurking behind a closed door waiting to run out screaming Anaethema'

[wise ocean]

okay, I don't actually have an appropriate intimacy for HER and WSAV is three dots in Craft I don't have, so I feel reasonably confident in my choices given being buoyed by greater manse

[bleak hazel]

HER/WSAV with a combat applicable WSAV is basically just for when you want to be a serious primary or secondary combatant

either one alone is plenty of mote efficiency for a lot of builds, neither if you don't intend to be facechecking at any point and are happy letting the sword perverts do that

although WSAV + your preferred Essence Replenishment set to social pursuits can be really neat for socialites too

because WSAV makes your full excellency 3 motes, which means it doesn't flare you

and then you can spend periph freely in social scenes getting giant dice pools

using personal motes only for expensive social charms

[wise ocean]

on one hand, I do want to do Good Combat and I have thrown form and artifact weapon for good reason

on the other hand, I genuinely don't think I can afford it at all

zero lore dots, zero craft, zero presence

[bleak hazel]

WSAV alone is worth 3 in craft to qualify for the dip

the others, yeah, don't bother

[wise ocean]

mm. I'd have to drop Optimistic Security Practice, I think

switch over three dots to Craft and the charm to WSAV

not sure if worth because 3m for -5 on a withering roll post-hit is really good

[bleak hazel]

how are you swinging the intimacy on that one?

[wise ocean]

can't drop spiritcam because necromancer, can't drop thrown because Form...

[bleak hazel]

but yes it's very strong

[wise ocean]

I suppose respect isn't especially compassionate, hm

you can't use Thrown to parry, I don't think, so I have to keep the melee tax and the specialty

I suppose I could try dropping Sail 3 and YSA, but that's also quite good IMO

8 dice, forecast trouble along route up to successes hours

[bleak hazel]

You may as well go Dodge if you want a defence to use with light thrown weapons, Absent Self is cheap def

[wise ocean]

I've got dodge 5 through avoidance, but whenever I dump one defense on a combat character I start nervously eyeing undodgeables/unblockables

[bleak hazel]

Grab Duck Fate later and you're totally fine, it's expensive but it also nopes all enviro hazards and a lot.of other stuff by automatically applying 6 sux from dodge 6

[wise ocean]

frees up 3 dots and a specialty but not the charm, but I suppose I can just tank the XP

[wise ocean]

checking this: I didn't realize how good this was until now even at E2, damn

Full excellency + 1pt stunt + WP is something like 12 hours if I can finagle a specialty on it now

[buoyant summit]

🐰Oh the Silver Prince is a Thousand Blades master stylist

[wise ocean]

he's rich enough

[fierce star]

the silver prince's true superpower is that he has six dots in resources

[wise ocean]

honestly if I was statting the SP I'd give him at least one charm to be the Light-Bending Mega Rich Guy

that seems deathlord-appropriate

[marsh garden]

that seems kind of perfect, yeah

[buoyant summit]

God I am going to so enjoy playing him and his deathknights

I just get to chew scenery, this is great

[marsh garden]

hmm

is cloth-of-silver just like, a poetic normal thing?

or is it some kind of moonsilver silken armor?

[buoyant summit]

I would not put it past him to have a fancy robe of moonsilver, yeah

Though you can just

Thread normal metals

[marsh garden]

yeah

[buoyant summit]

It's likely both

[marsh garden]

but that's the question

[buoyant summit]

A way to signify it's moonsilver

And a purple way of phrasing 'brocade'

[marsh garden]

cloth-of-gold (and cloth-of-silver?) are iirc real things

but like

moonsilver is here

[buoyant summit]

It's likely both, top xD

[marsh garden]

and this is the infinity dollars infinity halberds guy

[wise ocean]

Roustame Diodore: "Among other things... but calm down, I'm but a lowly single-digit billionaire."
Harrier Du Bois: "Really?"
Roustame Diodore: "No, not really. There are actually quite many digits."
Suggestion: [Easy: Success] - "A man this *chill* is at least a triple digit billionaire."```

[buoyant summit]

It's cloth-of-silver made with moonsilver

[marsh garden]

yeah, probably

god

[wise ocean]

exalted has cloth-of-jade, so it's definitely an esoteric magical material

[marsh garden]

you fucking know this man has a charm to make all of his artifacts free

[buoyant summit]

Yes

Thousand Blades

[marsh garden]

that's just weapons

[buoyant summit]

And having five borjillion motes

Because he's like

Essence 8

[bleak hazel]

he has many spears

[marsh garden]

"why would i commit motes on all of my outfits? inefficiency is for the poors"

"just have an omnicommit charm for everything at once"

[bleak hazel]

I would not expect him to be quite as beefy as FAFL because that's FAFL's entire thing, but he's large

[marsh garden]

i imagine he's a weedy fuck with forty-six artifacts that he's only invested one evo into each, max

[wise ocean]

A character's Resources rating increases depending on range band from the Silver Prince - though never equalling or greater than his. The Silver Prince gains this increase as bonus dice on influence rolls leveraging this difference in wealth. When a character exits the Silver Prince's presence, their Resources return to normal.

[buoyant summit]

Oh I wouldn't design him like that, rest assured lmao

[wise ocean]

just being near the silver prince makes you look richer, though unfortunately you are still always poorer than him and he knows it

[merry arch]

I almost misread this as the difference between your resource rating and the silver prince's counts as range bands of distance

which

really funny

[marsh garden]

oh wait that's also peak

[tulip folio]

Hmm...what's the silliest lunar forms that are Not Legendary Size? It's what...Hippo, Bear and Cat?

[prisma sun]

Hellboar

[marsh garden]

pestletails are in fact not LS

enjoy HTH

[velvet raft]

Hellboar and bear are the only real ways to get berserker, which has a bunch of protean synergies

[tulip folio]

nods

Oh yes but this isn't for chararacers with protean 😛

That sounds like 'lunar things'

[velvet raft]

Yeah probably pestletails

[tulip folio]

I am 100% staring at the silly eclipse charm that is 'get lunar shapechanging but you're not able to get legendary size and can't do it during dawn' XD

And going 'oh god, this seems so busted'

[marsh garden]

yeah, i started salivating about pestletails as soon as i saw them

and never managed to forget

so as soon as i saw this

it was locked in for me lmao

for reference, their stat block

14d FoS with no LS lol

[tulip folio]

God, that is so fucking silly.

[marsh garden]

yep

put ISoB on

and now you can drop enemy OVW by 2

with resting 26 soak pre-alch bullshit

and if you can flurry Full Defense with Shape through something like, say, a shield-tagged mutation

[bleak hazel]

you can also still use your alchemical charms, tremendously BS

[marsh garden]

that's 30 resting soak, hardness 14, your +2 non-charm defense, and stealing init when they inevitably plink

[bleak hazel]

I don't think you can get the latent but the latent makes it a disgusting lunar combat form too

[marsh garden]

yeah

all three latents seem goated on lunars

HTH, +2d/+2 raw on prone, steal init on withering plink that happens because your OVW is 0

[bleak hazel]

like most Core and some HDNP animals, it was not designed for Lunar use and followed the core NPC philosophy of "huge beef, really strong innate abilities, terrible dice pools" which Lunars turn into absolute bullshit

2 automatic sux on attacks against prone, so 4 motes free

[marsh garden]

also i think you can get it with the eclipse actually

because the sidebar mentions that it follows all lunar rules

so you can probably buy latents as normal

[bleak hazel]

never mind then, become Better Lunar

[marsh garden]

yeah

[tulip folio]

Shapechange, then install collosus.

[marsh garden]

at e3 you're just an ontologically superior lunar

[tulip folio]

You can't turn into a legendary size animal

[marsh garden]

both because your math is better

and because you're a gundam

[bleak hazel]

really my actual ST counter to this is "no, you cannot learn shapeshifting from a creation-side NPC unless you crack that seal, get the big razor out"

[tulip folio]

But you can be that animal BUT LEGENDARY SIZE

And now you're a Zord

[marsh garden]

yeah i was looking at this for my Creation jade alch, so

if an ST goes "have you considered shitting yourself forever" my only response would be

[bleak hazel]

I was skimming some 2e books for lore the other day and I was reminded that the iconic Adamant was trying to learn SMA from freaky visions she kept having

I wonder if she's still on that

probably not

[marsh garden]

but if i do get access to this shit, i will be the most unstoppable battle-dino

[bleak hazel]

the 2e alchs had a pretty good cast honestly

[marsh garden]

actually wait pestletails aren't ankylosaurs

whatever the fuck they are

[bleak hazel]

even if Thousand-Faceted Nelumbo really needed to actually put on some clothes

you could tell the attitude of the authors by which ones made her cloak an actual poncho and which made it a tiny shoulder covering that left her walking around tits out all the time

[bleak hazel]

my lunar shapeshifting banlist is basically "siege lizard, tyrant lizard, hippo, bear, pestletail, others if they prove to do some real bullshit"

[tulip folio]

Honestly I'm tempted by this charm just to have riri turn into some sort of cute, stupid looking animal for the bit. Not even using it in combat.

[bleak hazel]

all of which are fairly nerfable

bird form is worth the XP

[marsh garden]

pestletail's biggest issue is HTH access, right?

other number problems, but

that's the one that's like. actually egregious, aiui

[bleak hazel]

it's a perfectly optimised statstick with a broken charm on top, yeah

[tulip folio]

Turning into a Bird or a Cat (Not used in combat, just used to Eat Rats and Be Cute) would be funny for RiRi.

[bleak hazel]

Hippos are similar but with more kills you instantly innates, Tyrant Lizards are legendary size grapplers with abilities that were fully not designed for PCs

[marsh garden]

ahhh, hippos just get Better Piercing, i see

and instagib crashed goobers

[wise ocean]

honestly, considering thousand blades has a "toss your weapon really far" charm, that'd work too

Mega Rich Distance-Bending Guy

albeit that'd be an active instead of a permanent

[merry arch]

true

I kinda fw the vibe of him turning that shit on + him having resources 6.
did you really think you would ever be able to cross the gulf between us? ha.

[wise ocean]

it would fit for silver prince to be less beefy than fafl but still combat deathlord-tier by dint of being Kite Man. Much to consider

Bishop has phase 2 + MA + SMA, FAFL is War Melee Dusk, SP is Kite, who else do we have for combat DLs

also: water dragon plus hungry ghost plus vbos plus albicant, all unarmed, for bishop?

[marsh garden]

water dragon feels too young to be something entrenched in his fighting style (since it's an Immaculate Order thing, right?) but the flavor is sick

i'm not sure hungry ghost fits him though

he's a preachy philosopher guy

[bleak hazel]

Bishop has Void Circle, Enlightenment SMA and his super-form, he is probably the most individually dangerous of all of them
Heron has potentially fun idle socialite -> absurdly lethal combatant transition
Walker has dog + dudes + I suppose you could give him a shadowland reality marble
FAFL we know
Dowager has various horrific kaiju transformations
Prince has a lot of MA and evos
Mask is just a guy, sorry Mask

[marsh garden]

i don't think his style would include much "feral screachur lunging at you with the power of angyangyangyangy"

[tulip folio]

What styles work well with earth dragon? There's so many unarmed styles. XD

[bleak hazel]

honestly earth dragon is so huge in general that it barely cares what you combo it with

Toad is a direct combo of great power

[marsh garden]

i feel like the shadowland reality marble is like, too core to the Walker's vibes to not be in his combat sheet lmao

[bleak hazel]

who am I missing... Eye is not a fighter but can probably power up at least one doominator machine if you challenge them, and Lover likely throws you into psyche effect hell dreamscape

[tulip folio]

Fair

[bleak hazel]

in terms of danger I am way more scared of Heron than any of the other eight

[marsh garden]

Eye's QC should just be a pile of HLs and "they run away, use other QC stat blocks for the real fight"

and then like

[bleak hazel]

in terms of who I would least like to fight it's Bishop all the way

[marsh garden]

spamming necromancy if they can't

[tulip folio]

Lover's noted as having a thin blade...I could see her being a variation of the new devil style in infernals, with some slightly adjusted intimacies it keys off.

Working more with despair than fear

[wise ocean]

nah, the hungry ghost comes out when the Resident Evil Phase 2 does

I was thinking Water Dragon + VBOS + Albicant because they all share the same Vibes for Phase 1

[bleak hazel]

Bishop is older than Water Dragon, but he could have picked it up

[marsh garden]

hmmm

[tulip folio]

I'd unironically give Heron the new Hungry Ghost style. She's capable of being classy and stylish but she's a serial killer at heart.

[wise ocean]

white reaper seems like a bit of a muchness but is very good with VBOS and Albicant

[tulip folio]

She wants to get up in your face and hack you up

[marsh garden]

i feel like even in phase 2 he's still preaching

it's just with ten mouths and a distorted Final Fantasy villain voice

[prisma sun]

I kinda dislike giving Anathema Immaculate styles

[marsh garden]

and he's losing his cool

[prisma sun]

Feels Rude

[marsh garden]

also yeah Hungry Ghost and Ebon Shadow imo

if heron uses any MAs

[wise ocean]

consider: heron devil-sword/Immanent Steel EB smallsword mainhand + hungry ghost hatchet offhand

[marsh garden]

i don't think she'd be that high into MAs, honestly

[bleak hazel]

I would give her Cerulean Lute for her first phase

she has to kill you with a parasol at some point

[wise ocean]

this is true but if anyone'd steal an immaculate style to philosophically flex on people it'd be bishop

[marsh garden]

zero to two seems right, three or more doesn't really fit her vibes

[tulip folio]

'I won't want to fight I only want to kill'

[wise ocean]

I agree with Iki on despair devil prince and hungry ghost (plus I really like characters who switch MAs between dual wielding), but I recalled this from the other day and thought it was Heroncore

The stylist moves into close range of an enemy within medium range and makes a decisive surprise attack, dealing (his mobility penalty + attack roll extra successes) dice of damage. This doesn’t include or reset her Initiative, and uses her reflexive move action.```

oh okay we're doing this [removes limb]

[marsh garden]

it is quite fitting aesthetically, it's true

that's more of an "underestimate me in combat" power than a "social to slaughter" one, tho

[wise ocean]

📝 this is true.

[marsh garden]

probably has both

at least to some extent

but Abyssal thrown is definitely her shtick

[fierce star]

I think the lover's fight is tons of minions with perfect morale, void circle necromancy, and crushing psyche effects

[marsh garden]

yeah

[wise ocean]

Endlessly Replenishing Guys In Psychic Hellscape

awful toxic fight

[marsh garden]

she tells you to kill yourself because life is meaningless over and over, except like

with an actual argument

[fierce star]

... wait is the lover just rule 63 low tier god

[marsh garden]

or tells you that all of your friends hate you, you're unlovable and always have been, as a creature inherently devoid of value

but that's okay

[bleak hazel]

brand new sentence, well done

[fierce star]

you're welcome I'm sorry I was compelled to type it

[marsh garden]

you don't need anyone else's love, right? it doesn't matter that they were never actually your friends, that your loyalty is unreciprocated

that your parents just pretended

that your children are disgusted with you

[fierce star]

so which deathlord is dsp then

[marsh garden]

because it all ends anyway

[fierce star]

I will cease now this curse will spread no further

you know we always talk about the greater signs of mars and saturn but jupiter's kinda fucks too

[wise ocean]

Tyler1 FAFL

[prisma sun]

Anathema trying to stunt on the gang by busting out the Immaculate styles but we all start laughing because they can't actually imbue their soul with the true Essence of Water and they run off pissing and crying

[bleak hazel]

do we think the Lover can use Shun the Smiling Lady

[marsh garden]

nah

that one just kind of autofucks anyone

the lover definitely needs to spend more effort than "lol, sid charm you"

otherwise she'd probably use it pretty often

[wise ocean]

also what is lover anyway

she's not one of the obvious ones I think

so solar by fiat?

[prisma sun]

She's just a really powerful bird

[bleak hazel]

plausible solar, plausible bluesid but I'd give that one to Bishop, plausible no moon, lots of scope here

[fierce star]

She's heavily implied to have been a Solar who wa spart of the Black Nadir Concordant, at least in ex2

[marsh garden]

all of em were explicitly solars in ex2, though

[fierce star]

in ex3 the latter is still there but the 'what kind of exalt' is much more in question

[bleak hazel]

I'd say Solar makes sense, she has good fallen god-queen vibes

[marsh garden]

yeah, i feel like she's one of the solariest of em

along with, actually, the Eye?

[fierce star]

though I'd lean Solar or Lunar since the black nadir concordant was all solars and lunars

[marsh garden]

who feels pretty quintessential Unethical Zenith to me, even with their current iteration

[fierce star]

Eye has big 'twilight shotgun wizard' energy

huh, zenith?

[marsh garden]

er

no i meant twilight lmao

[bleak hazel]

OK, highly specific mechanical foible here - loads of splats have a charm you can buy once you get five ox-bodies, bot-bodies or demon-bodies

[wise ocean]

eye is either a solar or a really weird craft deeb

[fierce star]

oh ok

[bleak hazel]

Sids, as the squishy boys, do not

what would you make that charm

[marsh garden]

i don't think solars have that either actually

[bleak hazel]

I was thinking health gate but that's already Alchs - emergency teleport out?

[wise ocean]

yeah, I was about to say emergency teleport

[marsh garden]

that's just avoidance

[fierce star]

Misc: One that brings you back from the dead exactly once for exactly one year and one day and gives you a bound-spirit style defining intimacy that can't be waekened for some quest the ST sets for you.

[marsh garden]

and duck fate

[wise ocean]

nah, avoidance and duck fate require you to be conscious

[fierce star]

as fate brings you back to puppet your corpse for one last important job

[wise ocean]

this'd be "get incapacitated? zoink"

[bleak hazel]

auto-avoidance is kind of bullshit to be fair, I would not make it that dramatic

[bleak hazel]

OK that's very cool but not super gameable most of the time

hang on let me check the alch one because I don't want to make the Sid Tanky charm anywhere near as good

[marsh garden]

i suppose my own question is

[wise ocean]

"doesn't un-incapacitate you and you can't choose where you go, so better hope it has medical attention" is a fair complication to add to teleport out, I think

[marsh garden]

what would the solar one be?

[bleak hazel]

I don't think they actually need this, it's just a cute symmetry I noticed between deebs, alchs and infernals

[fierce star]

that is fair it is not very gameable but like

[wise ocean]

yeah, solars and abyssals don't get this either

[fierce star]

I really like the mechanically enforced idea of One Last Job

[marsh garden]

i don't think lunars get it either

[fierce star]

lunar's 'I have five ox bodies and get to be super tough upgrade' is 'I have invested in stamina charms'

they really don't need it

[marsh garden]

i mean

so is alchs'?

but alchs get a five ox-bodies charm too

[fierce star]

yeah but lunars are a lot tougher than alchs IME

like don't get me wrong alchs are bastards to kill

but lunars are bastardier

[marsh garden]

alchs also get their whole free crippling injuries thing

[wise ocean]

it may just be a New Splats thing in the same way infernals have explicit HTH/brawlbullshit resistance in two (!) trees

[marsh garden]

yeah

a deeb thing that they went "oh that's cool"

and lifted for new splats

but they're still interesting

so no reason not to give em to everyone

it's not like bulk is a gate here

considering infernals get one lmao

[bleak hazel]

Sids also have a don't hammer me bro charm

and Infernals are extremely bulky

I don't think there's any particular rhyme or reason as to who gets one, I just noticed that it was a commonality and thought it was cute

[marsh garden]

...actually, wait

[buoyant summit]

I want to say... Mask?

[marsh garden]

there is rhyme or reason

it's only the ones Chosen by Primordials

that have this charm

or wait no

dragons are children of gaia

nevermind

[buoyant summit]

Heron was a Night Caste, which feels rather obvious

Either that or a Serenities assassin, which I personally feel is a stretch

[marsh garden]

i keep forgetting that the elemental dragons are just Primordial-Adjacent

[bleak hazel]

Transcendent Ouroboros Meditation
Cost: —; Mins: Essence 2
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Ox-Body Technique x5

The Sidereal's health boxes now heal in reverse order - -0 health levels first, then -1, then -2 and so on. Her wound penalty cannot be higher than the number associated with her first undamaged health level, unless increased from this number by magic such as Secrets of Future Strife (Sidereals, p. 322). If the Sidereal remains fully active while healing, she halves the healing time required instead of doubling it.

This charm has no effect on the Sidereal's Incapacitated health level, which must heal before any other health boxes regardless of penalty.

a random thought

"hey, you've got your -0s back, get back out there"
"Sir, I still have significant internal bleeding"

[marsh garden]

ah, immunity to wound penalty

[bleak hazel]

no, you still take damage the usual way

[marsh garden]

that seems pretty good, but it is locked to five ox-bodies

[bleak hazel]

actually wait I've skewed that slightly because now if you have all your -2s filled you're on -4 penalty whereas normally you'd be on -2 until you took one more damage

so that's not quite as elegant is it looked

basically you take damage and penalties normally but you do your fast healing of good health first, so you can minimise downtime by fighting wounded

there we go that seems to account for gaps in the track

[merry arch]

John Wick mode for the battlesid...

permanently fucked up and still going. I like it

[bleak hazel]

this is kind of minor so I might include a healing time multiplier of some kind

hmm, what if you could commit some motes to get a [Stam] multiplier to healing speed as long as you stay active

no downtime allowed

[buoyant summit]

That's hilarious

[bleak hazel]

normally remaining fully active doubles healing times, so I could just reverse that and have them halve instead

[velvet raft]

Thousand Blades, use tetsubos

[buoyant summit]

You could also do that with smashfists (yes ik technically WFHW came out before the book with smashfists but like... come on)

[buoyant summit]

Wait, gk, isn't your infernal in the voyserver doing 1k blades with smashfists?

[fierce star]

smashfists and god-kicking boots are just artifact versions of guantlets and iron boots, they are technically core and are brawl, not MA for a balance reason

though you can use anything with 1kblade sso

[buoyant summit]

fair I suppose

And Iki was asking what was a good weapon to combo 1k with Earth Dragon Style

[velvet raft]

Naw, I dropped that character

But yeah Earth Dragon is only compatible with unarmed and tetsubos

[buoyant summit]

I feel like it should let you use smashfists but I get why not I suppose

[bleak hazel]

dear lord it's already good enough

[velvet raft]

Something funny is there’s a bunch more MAs that use boots than there are that use gloves

[bleak hazel]

personal taste here is ED + Toad into SMA

basically nothing isn't gold in that combo

but you do need to go unarmed/silken or unarmed/unarmoured

[buoyant summit]

idk if Iki is making a character that can SMA

[velvet raft]

1k blades is honestly kinda awkward for sids once SMAs come along

Because it really wants to use its form charm

[tulip folio]

Yeah, sid

[buoyant summit]

Ah

[velvet raft]

For a Sid I do think ED + Toad is probably the way

[bleak hazel]

ED, Toad, then Exalt your Ways for earth aura

and go relatively light on the high essence earth derg until then

[velvet raft]

It’s too bad that there’s no tanky SMAs at present

[bleak hazel]

instead they just have stupid good defence bonuses

[velvet raft]

This is true

I just mean that aesthetically, the crop is currently limited

[bleak hazel]

it's probably good you can't add giga soak to Nest of Living Strands + Ways of Exaltation because I think most STs would cry if their sid popped three reflexive charms and declared they were a soakbeast with parry 11 and a -3 penalty to hit them

[buoyant summit]

what the fuck

[velvet raft]

Nest of Living Strands is wild

[bleak hazel]

it's fucking amazing to me that that charm is reflexive and the one that just lets you walk on air is Simple

Asna Firstborn please stop serving all this steak and lobster with this much butter

[velvet raft]

Those first five CMOS charms are absolutely in the category of “anyone should pick these up eventually”

[bleak hazel]

although the real juice with UMSS is that you can pair it with DOTHS and all of a sudden you're a dematerialising terror monster

major intimacy supporting your threaten, and you got that threaten by rushing some random guy

and yeah E3 CMOS is easily the strongest SMA

unless you really push PAOC and PAOC doesn't count because instead of 5 charms it's like 11

[wise ocean]

oh huh, exalt ways lets you get deeb auras too?
I'm putting more money down on immaculate style bishop flexing then

[bleak hazel]

unsure bishop can use other SMAs

he definitely can't teach them, but we don't know either way on use

[wise ocean]

if he knows any other SMA at all it'd be paoc unarmed, imo

[fierce star]

hmm

[wise ocean]

more broadly I'd wonder how he developed his own SMA without knowing any, but he could've also forgotten in the Deathlordization

[fierce star]

does your thousand blades arsenal have to be Gilgamesh Fatestaynight floating around you

[buoyant summit]

Can other Sidereal ghosts teach SMAs?

[fierce star]

or can youg rab one out of hte air and stunt on people with it

[bleak hazel]

no

[buoyant summit]

Got it

So he is in fact just Built Different

[bleak hazel]

the higher souls of former exalted are not exalted

Bishop may have been a Sid in life but even if he was he's an outlier freak of nature

philosopher georg over here

[buoyant summit]

What else could he have been?

[wise ocean]

that man is the most sidereal of sidereals

[fierce star]

just a normal dude who got really mad and was really into philosophy and martial arts

[bleak hazel]

eh, they all could have been Solars

[buoyant summit]

Sublime Danger iirc in all her depictions is dual-wielding while also having her titular Thousand Daiklave Wings

[bleak hazel]

but he is very siddie

and yes for 1kblades you can do what you like

my current 1kblades infernal has exactly one spear that he does absurd wuxia tricks with by moving it when it's not in his hand and then grabbing it out of the air with completely different momentum to what it had when he dropped it

[fierce star]

well I remembered that one of my favorite darktide builds is knife psyker, so I just have this mental image of my secrets sid having a halo of knives where she grabs one at a time to do the basics of CQB on people

[wise ocean]

if bishop just knew a SMA I could buy solar, develop SMA, nah, sid

[fierce star]

and sometimes just do Wierd Telekinetic Bullshit with it

[buoyant summit]

I will admit I get very limited mileage out of 1k blades because

[fierce star]

OTOH I can just... stick with ebon shadow and maybe VBOS?

[buoyant summit]

I lowkey hate its base aesthetic

[bleak hazel]

the one thing Bishop clearly lost when he died was his poetry skills because the Albicant scripture is really mid

[buoyant summit]

And am not a floating weapons girlie

[bleak hazel]

1kblades is great here because I'm trying to unite the FIVE ELEMENTS OF HELL by forging five different elemental direlances and corrupting them in various yozi bodies

[wise ocean]

bishop did not attend incarnae poetry hour

[bleak hazel]

but I admit fighting-wise I am sticking with one big spear and four floaty ones for doing funky rituals

which he can swap out

[buoyant summit]

Wait

Hold on

[velvet raft]

1k is very much doing a specific power set that shows up in wuxia

[buoyant summit]

Ur fucking making Xaldin

[fierce star]

is that a kingdom hearts dude

[velvet raft]

Oh no it’s the guy from the jerks club

[fierce star]

he looks like a kingdom hearts dude

[velvet raft]

Yes

He’s one of the dudes in the Hooded Jerks Club

[buoyant summit]

Organization XIII is the funniest fucking enemy faction in a video game ever

[velvet raft]

They’re so stupid

[buoyant summit]

Bunch of fucking r/im14andthisisyeet users being broody teenagers in long leather jackets

[marsh garden]

XALDIN MENTION

[buoyant summit]

PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

[marsh garden]

I ACTUALLY THINK I BROUGHT HIM UP IN REGARDS TO THOUSAND BLADES A FEW WEEKS AGO

[bleak hazel]

no idea who this guy is but the spears are cool

[fierce star]

I have kingdom hearts fully wihtin the 'it's like baki' folder in my brain

where the more I learn the less I know

[velvet raft]

Rhi I should show you the thing I wrote while I was trying to play all of Kingdom Hearts

[buoyant summit]

My sibling who I now live with looooooooooooved Kingdom Hearts

[marsh garden]

xaldin has like zero personality, but

[bleak hazel]

currently Tepet Telek is more Yang Cang from Shadow but he will be adding more weapons as he goes

[marsh garden]

he fights by wielding two sets of floating triplicate spears as giant claws

[buoyant summit]

Org XIII is unironically in my opinion

[marsh garden]

which goes unimaginably hard

[buoyant summit]

Great inspo for a group of new Sids who are all having various crises

Oh yeah

[velvet raft]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KWyC3IJtOaXg4ahqQibzY6tzmvVa0JWd4kG8_idLjAQ/edit (Ireland was the internet name I used for my then-gf)

[buoyant summit]

They're such good inspiration for (so bad it's good) Sids

That there's Organization XIII

And then

THE REEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL ORGANIZATION XIII

I fucking love KH it's so stupid

[bleak hazel]

key swords have already fully been absorbed into Exalted because nearly everyone's read Keychain of Creation

[marsh garden]

read what

[prisma sun]

What

[buoyant summit]

Order of the Stick but for Exalted

[marsh garden]

ah

[buoyant summit]

it's decently funny

[marsh garden]

first time i've ever heard of it

[buoyant summit]

I will say there is exactly one baller design in KH

In a deeply teenagerish way

[chilly sluice]

it's pretty good, and then unfortunately succumbed to the hiatus curse

[buoyant summit]

Marluxia is both pink and covered in 'Signals That This Character Is Death'

And I think that's great and hilarious

[velvet raft]

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sora’s onesie is incredible

:D

[marsh garden]

i love marluxia

[buoyant summit]

lmao

[marsh garden]

and i was normal about larxene for a bit as a kid

when i played chain of memories

[prisma sun]

King Mickey is a really funny character design they should use him for other things

[marsh garden]

this but unironically

[buoyant summit]

But yeah Org XIII are great inspo for schlocky supervillain renegade Sids

[marsh garden]

KH has the most interesting mickey mouse because he's a weird little yoda-ass freak who kills people

[buoyant summit]

snrk

[marsh garden]

or ghosts

they're a good blend of both of those

"people whose existence the world is trying to erase"

[prisma sun]

The Deathlords definitely all have those big fuck chairs

[bleak hazel]

Keychain of Creation is a fun comic and also has a very fun sid in it

[buoyant summit]

Which of the 13 Deathlords map best onto which Organization XIII member, thread locked etc etc etc

[bleak hazel]

but the core conceit is the following:

[fierce star]

I really love the way keychain presents SMAs

that sort of playing with the medium bullshit is my absolute jive

[marsh garden]

and "the living dead, who enacted a blasphemous work and refuse to succumb to the call of oblivion, torn between the echoes of emotions they know they should have and the all-consuming drive to be real again"

i had to type that like three times because mobile discord hates me

[velvet raft]

Organization 13 are the deathlords

[marsh garden]

on the other hand.

i hate it too

[velvet raft]

Wait Rhi already said that

[marsh garden]

yep lol

[velvet raft]

I’m dumb

[marsh garden]

they're a very deathlord-adjacent body of Superpowered Dead People Who Aim To Annihilate The World

their motivations are drastically different, sure

[velvet raft]

In earlier editions there were 13 deathlords

[buoyant summit]

I can't take full credit, Voy made the chair joke

[prisma sun]

I think there still is?

[velvet raft]

(Four of them were left for STs to come up with)

[buoyant summit]

Setting up the alley-oop

[marsh garden]

but their plan to make kingdom hearts was "destroy all things, return them to primordial nothing, and drink of the blood of the world to Become Whole Again"

[prisma sun]

I still dont know what kingdom hearts is

[buoyant summit]

Unless you play literally all the games you

[prisma sun]

Like the actual macguffin

[bleak hazel]

there are currently 9 deathlords but you can make up however many more you like

[buoyant summit]

Kind of can't

Oh

[chilly sluice]

well I hear it's Light

[velvet raft]

It’s a dimension, and also a power source kinda

[velvet raft]

No it’s Dark

[marsh garden]

the heart in KH is basically the Id

oversimplified as best as possible

[prisma sun]

Okay but its just a big moon

[marsh garden]

there are the three cores of a person in KH, the body, heart, and soul

the body takes the place of the mind basically

[velvet raft]

I’mma be real I don’t think even Nomura knows what Kingdom Hearts is

[velvet raft]

The funny thing is that heartless have hearts and nobodies have bodies

[marsh garden]

Kingdom Hearts is just a primeval source of creation through the lens of [Emotion]

[buoyant summit]

Nomura is now always wearing a hotdog suit when he goes into the office

[marsh garden]

yeah, it's a great bit

[buoyant summit]

https://giphy.com/gifs/7Eipor01ypMm3LeG4v

[velvet raft]

Nobodies have no hearts

[marsh garden]

well

[velvet raft]

Heartless have no bodies

[marsh garden]

heartless also have no hearts lol

except the fake ones

which have other people's hearts

but the nomenclature is very silly, it's true

[chilly sluice]

a heartless is made up of the heart of the person

[velvet raft]

Heartless are hearts, no?

[marsh garden]

pureblood heartless are living Dark

[buoyant summit]

We should prooooobably go back to talking about Exalted before a mod discovers us

[marsh garden]

emblem heartless are artificial, and a result of Big Nort Bullshit

yeah probably

[velvet raft]

Quick uh

[bleak hazel]

look, we can fake it, someone find some bodies and a Black Claw stylist

[marsh garden]

for those who know anything about the characters

[velvet raft]

Fanfiction idea: a sidereal and an infernal get sent to the KH universe

[marsh garden]

which Org members' roles would be best as sids

and which would be best as abyssals

roxas is a get

[buoyant summit]

Xehanort is Rakan Thulio

[prisma sun]

Man ive been so busy that I forgot about sword sid

[marsh garden]

Thulio doesn't possess people enough

[prisma sun]

I did have an idea though

[buoyant summit]

I have a dark horse actually

[fierce star]

I just want you all to know that I understand even less about kingdom hearts now

[buoyant summit]

Whoever the claymore guy is, who gets power from the moon and goes into a rage?

Lunar

[marsh garden]

Saix

with an umlaut over the i

idr the alt code for it lol

[velvet raft]

That’s the normal progression

[marsh garden]

i mean

[fierce star]

lmao

[marsh garden]

being completely frank, there are a lot of things that aren't hard to get

and i could explain the basic plot pretty quickly

[prisma sun]

I do think the Sword SMA should have a God Cutting Blow that lets you cut spirits into two new gods

[marsh garden]

but i don't think that ID really cares about that

[buoyant summit]

Oh, to be clear Topple, me calling KH stupid isn't like, fully an insult

KSBD is stupid

Exalted is deeply stupid

I love both those things lmao

[fierce star]

hmm. I like making characters with lots of merits/bakcgrounds (depending on the white wolf game), because I enjoy narrative power/ties, but i've had an ST recently ask me to stop spending so much on those 'so there's more room to grow as a character', which seems... not necessarily wrong but

[marsh garden]

but yeah, Saïx is a true-blue lunar

[velvet raft]

KH1 was good, KH2 was okay, BBS was mostly good

[fierce star]

it feels odd to me to get asked to be more of an island as a person

[buoyant summit]

This

Feels like a roleplaying critique they are couching in mechanical asks

Which

Feels

Kind of wrong

[marsh garden]

nah, i can understand the perspective

[prisma sun]

I think thats a fine concept to ask you to build up a story

[marsh garden]

i don't think it's necessarily correct

[buoyant summit]

I mean being charitable I get their point

[bleak hazel]

I am immune to this because I always want so many different charms that 100% of my bonus points are abilities

[buoyant summit]

I think asking 'please don't take this merits' is

The wroooooooong way to dooooooooo thaaaaaaat?

[marsh garden]

but it's a statement of "your person already has an entrenched power structure and social circle, and i would like you to leave those less complete than they currently are"

[fierce star]

I mean they're a great GM so I don't mind adjusting for such, it's just an odd ask

[marsh garden]

"so your character has more reason to reach out and acquire new contacts as opposed to purely engaging with your own"

[fierce star]

or, well, I would consider it odd

[marsh garden]

adding hooks for "missing spots" in your allies

[buoyant summit]

We don't even know what merits are being objected to tho

[fierce star]

but also as an ST I love using player merits as plot hooks

[buoyant summit]

We just know 'merits'

[marsh garden]

ah, they said "lots of narrative ties"

so i assumed all of the people and places merits lol

[buoyant summit]

Fffffffaaaaiiiiirrrrr

[fierce star]

oh in this case it wa sme talking about how I was planning to spend probably a good 10 of my 15 BP on merits and he went 'that's a lot of merits, do you really need to, you should probably spend less so you have room to grow in the campaign'

[marsh garden]

...25 merits is rather a lot, it's true

but i'm tempted to do the same with several characters lol

[buoyant summit]

That is a lot but also

Yeah?

[fierce star]

I was not exagerrating when I say I spend all my stuff on merits (also only 20 because lunar)

[marsh garden]

ah rip

god i wish lunars got the full +5 from faction

[buoyant summit]

After abilities & attributes, the most common BP expenditure is gonna be Merits lmao

[prisma sun]

Okay yeah thats a lot of merits

[marsh garden]

it makes it so fucked to make a lunar martial artist with other buddies

[fierce star]

lunars get a free always on 'fuck your shaping (body) effects' instead for belonging to the faction I think that's fine

[marsh garden]

?

[fierce star]

tattoos

[marsh garden]

they get shapeshifting

tattoos are one of those benefits

i

would not say that "replaces" five merit dots?

sids get MA for free + their faction dots + RDs as a massive power structure

[fierce star]

luanrs who belong to the pact are the ones who get tattoos, and having a free always on ability to just nah I'd win for physical shaping is really strong

[prisma sun]

Shaping defense is worth five merits

[marsh garden]

infernals get a lot of extra intrinsic benefits as well as faction dots

[fierce star]

shaping effects are brutal

like maybe i'm just over-compensating for memories of ex2, but

but yeah this is oen of my more recent characters, a sovereign

26 total dots of merits

the big thing for me is that language is going to suck down 3 to 5 dots depending on my concept

almost always

[bleak hazel]

Don't Lunars get free Shahan-ya Merit 3 or am I misremembering a houserule?

[marsh garden]

they do not

if they did i'd be happy to take it

but they're just 10 and nothing

[fierce star]

that's a houserule, misc

[marsh garden]

no bonus for having a shahan-ya

[fierce star]

it's SUGGESTED you give them one free if all lunars in a game work for the same shahan-ya

[wise ocean]

I'd like eidetic memory more if I didn't get used to skipping all eidetic memory feats or equivalents because I'm just used to taking notes for the party

[bleak hazel]

no imperialism stipend for Lunars, clearly because they are morally spotless and never imperialise anyone

[fierce star]

but otherwise you gotta take it with your points

[marsh garden]

someone else made that exact same joke yesterday lmao

[bleak hazel]

might have been me, I make it a lot

[bleak hazel]

languages are hungry, yeah, I need 2 dots of language on my Sid and he's a Sid, he starts with a free one

I have never spent five dots on languages though

what ate up those

[marsh garden]

i'm curious as well, yeah

where are you regularly spending 3-5 on languages?

do you find that three languages is not enough normally?

(or two and Old Realm)

i can imagine a deeb having trouble there, wanting High Realm, Old Realm, Low Realm/Riverspeak/Dragontongue, another of those, and like. another regional tongue

for 3-4 dots

but outside of diplomats do you find yourself needing five non-Old Realm languages often?

[fierce star]

so: Rivertongue (Native, due to having been raised by a Guidlsman), Old realm (because a sorcerer), High realm (because outcaste adopted into the Dynasty), Low Realm (because outcaste adopted into teh Dynasty), a dot of Tribal languages (due to backstory as a scavenger king), and then Airtongue (because the game was taking place in the norteast)

this is something of an outlier, usually it's just 3 dots

[velvet raft]

I still think you should get a language per dot of linguistics and like 3 languages per dot of the merit or something like that

[marsh garden]

i actually like that it's abnormally expensive

[fierce star]

I love playing multilingual characters

[marsh garden]

but i don't have the experience here

[marsh garden]

huh. i was under the impression that Dynasts didn't exactly know low realm very often lol

[velvet raft]

Anyway, Just Take Riverspeak XD

[bleak hazel]

magic translation is slightly difficult in Exalted and as such it has to be at least vaguely sensible to take 1-2 translation charms instead of just learning every single language in Creation

(some splats fail at this, Solar translation sucks)

[prisma sun]

That does feel like in most games most of these would not come up

[velvet raft]

There's that one hearthstone that teaches everyone around you Old Realm

Problem solved XD

[marsh garden]

i respect taking them all for verisimilitude

[bleak hazel]

I love the contrast between what people spend BP on

[fierce star]

Dynasts don't always knwo low realm but it's not uncommon, and outcastes adopted into the families are often used as go-betweens to lesser people since they know the 'common' life bette rgenerally

[marsh garden]

ah

[bleak hazel]

if it's me it's all abilities all the time, if it's Gkat it's INFINITE ARTIFACTS and if it's ID it's a variety of interesting life experiences

my Thousand Blades Stylist started with a total of one artifact

[marsh garden]

based

I've been told that starting with like

2 is about reasonable

[bleak hazel]

yeah if you max it it rapidly becomes bullshit but you are also totally broke

[marsh garden]

and more than that makes TB gigafucked on math

[bleak hazel]

but this guy's an infernal crafter so he'll make his own

and his first story arc is "entering into tournament arc to find his weaknesses so he can excise them by slaughtering his own subsouls for artifact ingredients" so he has places to go here

[fierce star]

yeah this Sovereign literally went 'you know what would be the best way for me to get Queen Ulu's throne? colonizing Wu Jian for Uluiru' and went and bought an entire section of the city and moved some of her staff over to start trying to Cultural Victory her way through things

[marsh garden]

waow

[fierce star]

two of hte other PCs in that game were grubby outcaste dragonblooded martial artists who only spoke low realm so she couldnt' actually communicate with them directly lmao

but yeah. My PCs have usuallyb een through itneresting times before the start of any given game, and therefore have the merits one would expect

[marsh garden]

hm

making a bird goober

does this charm scan as functional?

Boltcatcher (1wp); Reflexive; Instant; Essence 2): The bandersnatch makes a grapple roll against a lightning bolt, peal of thunder, or similar weather phenomenon, succeeding automatically against mundane effects. Against a spell, Charm, or other magical effect, the bolt has Defense (origin's Essence), and the control roll is opposed by a relevant pool. On a success, the bandersnatch devours the effect, either immediately gaining (Essence x 2) motes or storing it for later. It can store up to (Essence) phenomena this way.

i tried to find other air-element dinguses that could catch lightning, but there are like. three non-dragon air elementals and most of the storm gods just throw lightning as far as i saw

[bleak hazel]

might want to add a range to the grapple, so "similar weather phenomenon [within close/short range]"...

otherwise makes total sense

is this intended to be a player-summonable dude

[marsh garden]

yeah

[bleak hazel]

probably Close then just so it's a lightning rod for its friends

[marsh garden]

going to be an elemental with like, minor combat prowess and more of an emphasis on scouting and tracking

was looking at the mospid, but i am unconfident about the power and necessity of "autowins all tracking"

is that weak because Exalt charms have a ton of get-fuckled, oppressive because it beats most charms, or neither?

[bleak hazel]

"autoconceal tracks" is a stock effect that a lot of stuff got built around

in my experience it doesn't come up often but you have interactions like this:

[marsh garden]

ah, i see

so i should probably have something like that (albeit weaker) for a magical tracker?

or would "has an excellent" work against most of these cases?

[bleak hazel]

the Mospid basically says "autosuceeds, except against Traceless Passage" so probably just copy the form of words from Sids

technically any charm is supernatural but I'd explicitly say it works

[fierce star]

today I learnedd you cannot have multiple mentors

Martial Arts (Free)
Divine Heritage 5
The Knife With No Kingdom 3
Silken Armor Placeholder 4
Manse 3
Ally 5
Mentor 3
Contacts 3
Contacts 3
Languages 2
Resources 2

I might have to drop eithe rthe silken armor or having Faedad as a thing.

[wise ocean]

dump a contacts and resources

like big boss, she's a loose cannon that plays outside the rules

my necrosid has all his imperialismbucks go to paying Manse Rent

[prisma sun]

The paymaster cant find drifts to pay him

[bleak hazel]

Rival is still living in four rooms in his dad's manse and blows a lot of his actual money on expensive booze and silver for crafting, Res 1

[fierce star]

Fair

[coral wraith]

Making it headcanon GM has had to bail Rival out of some stupid debt Gleam owed to a god

[bleak hazel]

highly likely

[fierce star]

my secrets gets her backing and pay docked because she keeps stirring shit among her coworkers

everyone's just like 'no we do not want to live in an office drama-romance-horror, that's already our day to day in the field, let us have this' and she's just 'no :3'

[buoyant summit]

If it's us it's 'what merits fill out this weird-ass character's style?'

[buoyant summit]

What a bitch lmao, amazing

[fierce star]

Yep

[tulip folio]

Hey so

Infernals coming out has actually boosted an existing martial art in a funny way.

Behold: An Alchemical Rat Stylist

'The stylist can convey other diseases with an appropriate stunt'

[wise ocean]

essence pulse cannon: gamma gun

[tulip folio]

Secret Technique: Plague Rat Brings Blight
Cost: —; Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 2
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Rat Form
There are few things that Autocthonia understands as well as disease. The machine god rots from within, his nature tied to his death as much as his brilliance. This gives Autocthonian martial artists a unique perspective on disease, understanding how it can wear at machine and flesh alike.

The Stylist gains the following benefits:
•She may inflict Diseases with Rat Style charms upon beings that are normally immune to disease by their nature, such as Automatons and Undead, though not those who are magically immune to disease. 
•She can exploit the weakness of those who's forms have been turned against them by mystical infection. Characters suffering Blight, Wyld Exposure, Whispers or Investiture of Hellish Glory are treated by the stylist as if they were diseased with Major Intensity for the purpose of Rat Charms.
•She can conceal the effects of diseases or blights she personally suffers to those without superhuman or magical senses, a fact often exploited by Apostates.```
Did a Rat Style Secret Technique. #1 is really the Big Bonus there most of the time as it means that undead can be tagged by rat style.

It's based on 'Plague Rat' being listed as an Autocthonian style but...we've already got Rat, so it's likely not a Full Martial Art on its own.

[graceful geode]

OK

Building my first Exalt

Sid

HALP

[coral wraith]

what's the concept you're aiming for here?

[graceful geode]

House of Secrets, 1kblades Thrown debuffer nerd

[coral wraith]

Okay, so big thing about Sidereals in particular first - Sids really want whatever their core competencies are to be at 5 dots

5 in an ability unlocks your second, and eventually third TN reduction at Essence 3

which is a large part of their excellency power

you're not like a Solar where you can just have an Ability at 2 dots, and a stat at 5, then slam in 7 dice and be good at it anyway

[tulip folio]

There's a reason my current Sid's skills look like this (You can't see it but earth dragon is also at 5)

[coral wraith]

you want stuff you really wanna be good at at 5, secondary competencies at 3, then you can have tertiary stuff you're mostly levelling for charms at 1 or 2, get them up later with splat XP

this does mean the majority of your bonus points should go into abilities

thats my big piece of build advice

[buoyant summit]

🦢(I did not do this for a I am a FOOOOOOOOOLISH SAMURAI WA-)

[coral wraith]

in terms of what you should level to do that, naturally 1kBlades should go to 5. if you're doing Nerd!Secrets stuff, Lore and Investigation are obvious ones to pump

[wise ocean]

hm, is 1kb compatible with the Thrown charms?

also: what essence are you aiming at

sids can be very rough to build at e1, especially with 1kb artifact tax

[coral wraith]

we're doing E1, yeah

[wise ocean]

oof

MA plus multiple artifacts plus attack tree plus regular nerd competencies plus sid dips

something's going to have to go

you don't even get the usual 1kb "you can spend the MA merit dots on artifacts instead" because sids just get MA merit for free

[wise ocean]

it is not, so dropping Thrown is an easy gimme

[coral wraith]

Oh

[wise ocean]

the martial artist chooses a single close-range artifact weapon as their signature weapon.

[coral wraith]

Yeah I just read 1kb, it does specifically say "close-range weapon"

Alas

[wise ocean]

I knew I recalled something about this from when 1kb gun was being discussed, shame

[coral wraith]

[prisma sun]

man

I just had an idea for a Kitsunue-themed character who uses whips for 1kb

[bleak hazel]

The convenient thing about whips is that they have really solid compatibility for such a niche weapon

You've got Live Wire, CMOS, eventually SVOP and Flowing Whip-Arm Style in Agents, plus melee

[wise ocean]

how is live wire, anyway, I've never gotten a good read on its power level

[bleak hazel]

Mean

Sids love it, even if they mourn having to lose the heavy armour when they take up SMAs

since it's got big accuracy boosts on a weapon that already gets wielded as dual lights

[coral wraith]

even just ranged grapple is really fuckin nice

[prisma sun]

Wait

wait wait wait

holy SHIT

[graceful geode]

Knife

[prisma sun]

Charcoal Spider works with Thousand Blades Unleashed

Since the threads count as light weapons

[wise ocean]

I... hm. Not sure how I'd rule "melee weapon (Thrown (Short))" here, ha

[graceful geode]

Or more precisely

Pages of a book

[tulip folio]

Live wire is a 'you want a specific weapon' style. It can theoretically be used unarmed but franly you don't want to.

It's more in line with Even Blade or co where it's not really a 'this does weapons and unarmed style'

As it cares a lot about having whips.

[prisma sun]

Unless you're a Lunar I guess

[marsh garden]

nah, it has explicit carve-outs for whips, so unless your GM specifically okays like

tail-and-whip for dual-wielding whips

still not happy to be unarmed

[tulip folio]

Also: I am very sad that fighting chains and whips are different weapons. I totally feel like you should be able to use Abyssal Chain Shenanigans with it 😛

[marsh garden]

that would be pretty cool

[coral wraith]

Lunar Live Wire with Whips would go crazy

Stack all your funny charms on top of it

add DBT for flavour

[bleak hazel]

Sid Live Wire is the clash build, with the possible exception of Snek

[prisma sun]

I mean I would say that a Lunar using the charm that lets you extend your arms like whips would count

I would allow someone to do that

[wise ocean]

that makes the build I idly considered the other day even more Potentially Interesting

sid live wire stylist who makes all their own gear with weaving, and has the eclipse charms from grandmother weaver
since it's silken armor, that'd probably be e3 with the start of cmos as well

[prisma sun]

Though I wouldn't let a Lunar know Live Wire since that's in The Other Setting

[wise ocean]

spidermaxxing

[marsh garden]

!

canon permission

[coral wraith]

The Alch book accounts for this, Creation has had parallel martial arts develop

[marsh garden]

i'd imagine you would want to fuckle with the charms a bit just for vibes, but

[bleak hazel]

"ah yes I was trained in this style by one of the Six Dipshits"

[prisma sun]

Ah dope

What fuckin charm am I thinking of for Lunars

it lets you punch far with gum-gum hands

[marsh garden]

there's a mutation for that

i think a dex charm too

but there's definitely a mutation

[prisma sun]

Yeah I thought so

can't find it though

[marsh garden]

this is the closest thing i've found so far, other than Long Reach

[prisma sun]

that's the bitch, I didn't think it was Strength

[marsh garden]

i think the one i was thinking of was just me conflating Finding the Needle's Eye with Long Reach

[prisma sun]

Decisive only though, gross

[marsh garden]

it's grapple-only, yeah

[coral wraith]

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

greater sign of mercury is so damn funny

[tulip folio]

'Peace'

[coral wraith]

"goobye"
teleports, literally, anywhere else

[tulip folio]

Greater Sign of Venus is perhaps my least favorite of the greater signs and it's still pretty hilariously good.

"No fighting allowed, no save, unless you pay a minimum 3 willpower and have a defining that supports it"

[coral wraith]

good luck lol

[tulip folio]

Walking into Malfeas, waving to various demons as the mob about to kill you has to just awkwardly shuffle about and go home.

You can also do a very funny thing with it and Deathlord Nonsense.

If you walk up to the Big Underworld army and trigger it, 90% of the Heavy Hitters need to Just Sit About.

...but being a psyche effect, all the zombies and necromantic machines are unaffected.

...and you get an out if you're 'fighting in self-defence'

So you have a Deathknight sitting about watching you 'self defence' through his entire army of zombies and necrotic titans becasue one of them swung at you while he can't give them orders to fight better

[coral wraith]

Lmfao

Amazing

[tulip folio]

In general, Venus is just an amazing 'Time for mass combat shenanigans' charm.

As sure, a big guy might have the spare willpower of an anti-psyche defence.

But the average fucker in his army?

They generally won't have a defining intimacy towards following him.

So even if the army leader does defend, he's now got the issue that it's turned into a '1vArmy'

[coral wraith]

very good point

[tulip folio]

So while it's my least favorite of the greater signs, that's a high bar.

That and the Lesser Sign of Venus is just incredible

'Yes, I would like a fucktonne of non-charm dice when the thing sids love more than basicly anything else is non-charm dice'

[coral wraith]

It scales crazy well

[tulip folio]

That said, this one is likely the funniest part of their anima powers.

'Sorry, this guy being happy doesn't align with fate. Suck shit'

'Turns out fate has you pencilled in for 'Denji in Chainsaw Man' levels of joy. Good luck with that'

[coral wraith]

Auspicious Prospects are so very fun

[velvet raft]

Session 1 of starting-as-mortals game today

[bleak hazel]

on one hand this being non-mute can be an issue, on the upside it doubles down on the thing the Sid excellency already does and goes "this is all the dice trick you're ever going to need", which is very doable with social

[tulip folio]

I also like it for sorta helping give Venus some width.

Sids wanting to take 5s in skills means they often have some other skills that are not fantastically high

It gives an amount of 'sure, I can basicly have a normal excellency on social stuff if needed'

[bleak hazel]

social maths is also reasonably constrained, you don't actually need 6000 sux because extra successes don't really help

[wise ocean]

greater sign of journeys is exceptionally funny

between the three non-combat divisions I feel it has the most cohesive and overall powerful anima set, especially since its lesser is "non-combat" (wink nudge athletics on thrown builds)

[bleak hazel]

there's a surprisingly small gap between the fightiness of the Sidereal castes since they all have Martial Arts and combat utility is very well spread out among the abilities

Battles and Endings are a bit more killy but not by a vast amount

[tulip folio]

And even then, due to the nature of them 'Journeys with a Battles Friend' is just as killy because they share asskicking.

[wise ocean]

Oh, naturally, they scale with the group since they're AoEs, but I usually just whiteroom singles to avoid multiplicative scaling from hearth or circle effects.

while the game is a four-person-party-average-TTRPG, I don't often end up doing the math like that :^)

[bleak hazel]

All the lesser signs being free at bonfire also means that a circle of fully super saiyan Siddies ready to take names also just coincidentally get really good at social, which is funny

May as well pop it, right

[fierce star]

a siddie of each caste and their adamant alchemical hype-man

[bleak hazel]

Alchs plus Sids is a genuinely incredible combo

Not only do they all buff each other with almost perfect synergy, but they cover each others weaknesses too

What do Sids lack? Direct, uncomplicated power and the ability to interact with people without being duplicitous just by the base factor of their existence
Alchs are very straightforward, pretty swole and have a ton of We're Friends Now powers

What do Alchs lack? Sideways approaches to problems, social stealth unless invested directly in it and intelligence on what's going to happen next week so they can have the right charms installed and ready.
Sids are an entire splat of sneaky weird prophets and can have that precog report for you in a few hours.

[fierce star]

man sidereals are ruining my build habits

[tulip folio]

Also on a conceptual level - Both of them have direct connections to pattern spiders.

With Pattern Spiders a cration of Autocthon and ally of the Sids

[bleak hazel]

The five colours of Sids plus a couple of metallic Alchemicals is just your average power ranger lineup where only the later-introduced ones are gold and silver or whatever

[fierce star]

'okay so I need to have all my main and secondary focuses at 5 so I have mote efficiency, then I need a bunch of three dot no prereq charms, and--why have I spent like 10 BP on abilities this is horrible how can I have my spy network now'

[bleak hazel]

Only 10? Slacking, 15 all day

[fierce star]

it was actually 14 before I swapped war and melee favored over to awareness and craft

now it's 10

a single dot in war for flavor reasons will have to suffice

[bleak hazel]

My current character is 3 ability dots behind where I'd like them even after ditching necromancy

Shame, Summon Ghost would be perfect here

Maybe someone else can get it

[fierce star]

Hmm. I wish you could take two mentors.

I'd liek both a Sidereal Sifu To Be Exasperated At My Shenanigans and also Dad.

[bleak hazel]

I was unaware that you couldn't

[wise ocean]

Can you actually not in the rules or is that just a sheet limitation?

I'd think #2

[fierce star]

it doesn't have the 'you can take this merit multiple times' disclaimer

so since some merits explicitly call out repurchasability, that mentor does it means that only one person can ever teach you things

ever

you have to kill your teacher to get a new one, which feels like something some variation of buddhism has

(obviously this isn't like, true true, i'm shitposting, but)

uuuugh I don't hav eroom for languages

I guess can I survive on Old Realm and Riverspeak

do these dot levels look appropriate siddie :V

[wise ocean]

hm, do you really need money?

Can squeeze 1-2 more languages out

[fierce star]

Well I feel like heaven wouldn't dock all her salary for her shitstirring ways, and the average sidereal is resources 4/backing 2.

[wise ocean]

Manse rent is also a thing!

Eats up resources, clearly (if the dots are useful elsewhere for charop)

[fierce star]

lol

then again technicaly Old Realm would be her native language anyway even withou siddie rules

... wait shit I need a do tof--wait is it linguistics or lore to be literate

linguistics

... fuck I forgot divine heritage

life is pain

[tulip folio]

It does annoy me that the game still goes 'oh yeah, need linguistics to be literate'

Just...let people do that as a disadvantage if they want it.

My hot take is: Dots in Linguistics should add languages and literacy is assumed unless you make it otherwise deliberately.

[fierce star]

do I really need wsav

[prisma sun]

I think illiteracy being the default is good because it makes statements about the verssimilitude of the world

[fierce star]

I'm willing to sacrifice versimillitude for ease of play.

[bleak hazel]

Also not getting 5000 languages for Linguistics 5 means that "translation ritual" is an actually handy charm to have

[fierce star]

I can probably get away with not having silken armor if I have soakrock

[bleak hazel]

Unfortunately the balancing of translation magic against learning languages is not good in places

[prisma sun]

I'm used to Warhammer Fantasy where having a guy in the party who is "the guy who can read" is an actual useful build

Its an interesting challenge to bypass and fits in a world with little to no standard education

Its also a tangible weakness if you are playing John Bumfuck: The Meatstick Dirt Farmer

[fierce star]

yeah but WHF is a different genre from Exalted

[tulip folio]

Also exalted having just so many languages.

[prisma sun]

Its a different genre but theyre both making the same statement

[tulip folio]

Getting all the languages a Heptogram sorcerer would know is the same dot value as 'a solid artifact'. XD

[prisma sun]

"You were originally a normal person and most people in this setting can't read and write"

[fierce star]

and honestly languages are just not wroth it from a character power perspective. You gotta make a sacrifice somewhere, and playability is worth more than versimilitude.

[wise ocean]

to be fair, I also like that you can just not buy the linguistics dot, especially in the context of how the game is normally played - someone else in the party is going to have the dot, that can be cool character moments, so on
and if you want it, the extremely rapid speed of progression means that you can get it

I just keep making character concepts where I need to buy the dot at chargen

[fierce star]

I mean, that's what flaws are for I feel like?

or would be for in this situation.

[prisma sun]

Flaws are stand out things that make you different from other people

Not baseline assumptions of everyone in the setting

[fierce star]

like, I have a character in a through the breach game. That game assumes basic literacy in both math and reading for every PC even though literacy rates in both were not the best during hte time period it's set. I just... decided to play a character who was illiterate in both.

[tulip folio]

Also: Depending on where you are, most people can read and write 😛

[prisma sun]

And those places would be the very small exceptions

[tulip folio]

The entire octet can read and write a Pictogram/Ideogram language

[wise ocean]

brother's never going to make that in the underworld with that skillset. even the entry-level positions require 10-15 years of killing people if you've not got your ME cert.

[tulip folio]

You also sorta run into the issue where 'Learning 1-2 languages' is as expensive as 'Learning a charm that lets you ignore the no shared language penalty entirely'.

[fierce star]

Being able to speak with every single dead person is a one dot merit

[marsh garden]

this is why merit dots should be cheaper

[bleak hazel]

those tend to be kind of specific, I admit I usually just spend a week learning the local language for 3xp

dedicated translation tends to only go on my true diplomat chars

(and this one infernal who just likes Linguistics)

[marsh garden]

it's fucked that learning languages in play costs like, up to six charms for five languages

if you don't slam em from the word go

i like that they're a meaningful choice, but i don't think being a polyglot should be that expensive

[bleak hazel]

they're one merit dot each, that's not much XP

[lament owl]

I think Topple means buying linguistics

[marsh garden]

nah, doesn't it scale up to the total cost of the [Languages] merit?

[bleak hazel]

oh, unless you go with the thing where incrementing a merit by 1 costs increasing multiples of XP

yeah that kind of screws you now I think about it

[marsh garden]

have fun paying 45xp for your languages

[lament owl]

Well

You can still spend

[Splat] xp for it I guess

[marsh garden]

yeah, it's just gigafucked

i really hate the scaling xp on merits

why is mighty thew more expensive than martial artist

when it costs fewer dots

[lament owl]

I also dislike scaling xp

Just kinda in general

[marsh garden]

having looked at the math, i think it's fine outside of merits

crucible rules' flat xp is more expensive overall than even the least efficient purchases of a 1-5 ability or attribute

but for merits, you buy up martial artist for 12

[velvet raft]

It's deeply tragic that alchemicals are subject to arcane fate

[marsh garden]

or you can buy mighty thew for 15, or whispers for 18

[wise ocean]

I would definitely not do this fwiw

[marsh garden]

crucible rules at least make it way cheaper there, 2 dots per and flat

instead of 3xrating

[wise ocean]

my multi-language characters just have a bunch of 1dot languages

[marsh garden]

sane and just

[bleak hazel]

crucible also gives you a lot more XP in general so while it shuffles the relative costs around a bit you do tend to have more stuff

[prisma sun]

To be fair you can also just like

Use your resources or retainers or followers or influence or summoning to just get a translator

Or backing or soldiers too even

Or mentor

[wise ocean]

at first one of my ideas with Graves was actually that he'd just tell people to read things for him

[prisma sun]

Yea

Like thats what Upstart Warlords Did

King Hu can't read because he was raised by tigers

He just shows stuff to his followers and asks them to read it

[velvet raft]

In particular, crucible lets you really stock up on charms, which is I think good on balance

It's not ideal if you have a player who is going to just take Every Single Melee Charm

But it helps a lot with diversification

[wise ocean]

I am an innocent man.

[velvet raft]

Honestly for a combat character in a crucible game (which I suspect I will be playing soon), I'd probably set a personal quota for pure combat charms and put everything else into Cool Shit and Weird Stuff

[fierce star]

Language is actually a seperate merit for each language RAW

so tit never costs more than 3 XP per language

(1 XP if it's a 'tribal' language)

[marsh garden]

oh? thank god

still mad about the way other purchased merits scale though lol

[velvet raft]

Isn't it four local languages to a dot?

BTW, other than like ... Delzahn, do we have any notable local languages from the South?

[fierce star]

I tend to assume every specific cultural group and city-state has it's own local language

so like, Paragon will have one, Gem will have one, the Dune People should have one

[dense verge]

i do get the illiteracy thing but at a certain point i would rather it be opt in with a flaw than at some point i need to pay the literacy tax

[marsh garden]

and that's how it is in plenty of games

[bleak hazel]

if they were going to do that they were probably going to do that anyway to be fair

now they just have more of them

[marsh garden]

i just...i enjoy that this isn't one of them, because that's something that's coming up literally right now in my game

i am in a party full of educated nobles and sids

who take it for granted that they and everyone around them can read

interacting with a Dynast and her buddy, who also take it for granted that everyone around them can read

and it's led to multiple problems already, including for my character, the only one who isn't a bureaucrat or scholar

[dense verge]

which is good, as thats part of the character, and playing with that limitation feels like it could be represented via flaw

[marsh garden]

i like what it informs about the dynamic, that just...not taking the Is Educated perks is what led to a problem

as opposed to having to go out of my way to go "i'm a stupid idiot that's worse than the default character assumption about this"

[dense verge]

also: the concept of both having illiteracy and linguistics. spoken influence only

[prisma sun]

But it isnt a flaw though, being literate is a bonus over the default assumption of a person

In this setting

[marsh garden]

(lack of education isn't lack of intelligence, of course, but the presentation would change if you specifically had to say "I am worse at this than normal")

(instead of "I am better at this than normal")

[chilly sluice]

One dot makes it still feel like this anyway to me

[marsh garden]

i would be down with making it two dots lmao

[fierce star]

i pay enough taxes

please no

[chilly sluice]

It just feels like a tax

[marsh garden]

but that's less popular, and also less easily remediable

[prisma sun]

Its a tax to not be a normal person which is Yeah

Its also a tax to be able to parry lethal weapons with your bare hands

[marsh garden]

yeah, i suppose the difference is that while i agree it feels like a tax, i specifically enjoy that here

[chilly sluice]

Making it a flaw is just more elegant for how people actually engage with it IMO

[fierce star]

^

[prisma sun]

But then you make the baseline assumption of every character in the setting that they can read

[fierce star]

every player character. NPCs are already Built Different in most cases.

[chilly sluice]

Or the majority of people just have that flaw

But they also aren't built like a PC anyway

[fierce star]

also not to disrupt from this argument but, sidereal stans, why did none of you tell me about bending the mirror

this charm fucks

[marsh garden]

or at least that Exalting magically makes you learn how to read, which i wouldn't mind if that was an explicit setting consequence

[prisma sun]

I would think thats silly lol

But likewise, NPCs use the same merits PCs do

[marsh garden]

i dunno, "the Exaltation comes with Old Realm" is already what sids do, so it's possible

[prisma sun]

Those are universal

[chilly sluice]

Theoretically yes

But I also think that's dumb tbh

[prisma sun]

I dont think it does? Just that you get taught it if you are with Heaven

[chilly sluice]

It leads to stuff like Giant, which is just not a very useful merit to PCs

[marsh garden]

ah, you're right

it's just part of the free resources package