Exalted

[marsh garden]

i swear it would be fine at 3...with crucible rules

[buoyant summit]

sadge

[marsh garden]

which would be 6xp instead of 12

[merry arch]

even then it costs nearly as much as an ox body and you only get a -0 and a drawback

game im playing in has it costed at 2 dots in unified xp and it's seemed completely fine

[marsh garden]

i mean a -0 and a drawback makes sense when half the splats don't get any -0s with their ox-body

lunars and infernals cap out at -2s and -4s (which is a lot better for infernals, but still), deebs are...a -1 and -2s?

[merry arch]

i just don't think one health level is worth 6-8xp

even if it's a -0

[marsh garden]

its a valuable HL

i don't think it'd be a super meta pick at 6xp

but i don't think mutations should be super meta picks

just feel good enough to take for your character concept, esp. since you can get em at CC with your non-charm resources

...i wouldn't mind if it was a -0 and a -4 at crucible four dots, actually

that's just a full (bad) ox-body at that point for a bit less less xp than a charm

[prisma sun]

Mutations shouldnt be meta yeah, theyre flavorful things for players at best unless youre a lunar or infernal

[bleak hazel]

this is mostly true, with a couple of outliers in Unusual Hide/Serpentine for everyone and Enhanced Toxin/Extra Arms for certain builds

Unusual Hide stacking with armour is really what makes it go wild

[marsh garden]

at the very least unusual hide in Problem Child quantities makes you the most recognizable motherfucker in the history of the universe

[velvet raft]

Just gotta take it with Subtlety :D

[marsh garden]

okay but at that point that's like

9? merit dots

[velvet raft]

A lot of dots

[marsh garden]

yeah sub's 2

9 dots

it's an exhorbitant amount of soak but also a lot of dots to get there, and that's a movement penalty to boot

[velvet raft]

Not 7?

[marsh garden]

oh right, carapace isn't an autopick

[velvet raft]

My ST in mortalgame ruled that subtle would cover two points of Unusual Hide, so that’s what I’ve got. But like, 4 dots for 2 soak at character creation doesn’t feel too crazy imo.

Oh carapace

I always forget carapace

[marsh garden]

i assumed that it was part of the "unusual hide's Too Much Soak"

[buoyant summit]

If I take the alch mutation charm, what should I get for 2 points alongside Hide 4?

[marsh garden]

since otherwise that's 5 dots for 5 soak and -5 disguise

[marsh garden]

if hide 4 and you want to be a tin can, carapace

which makes it hide 8

[prisma sun]

I need to finish Sable

[bleak hazel]

Carapace counts as medium so it's MA-no in most cases

Unusual Hide just works

[marsh garden]

or if you're in social you could pick up like...Pheromones + Musical Voice

or Imposing Features

[buoyant summit]

Does Golden Janissary work with armor? We forgor

[marsh garden]

janny's light only iirc

yuh

however

with One Simple Trick™ you can have carapace with any light armor style

lunars can do this too with Desert Basilisc Diadem

my lunar is going to end up with this combo and Flying Guillotine Style

[chilly sluice]

Huh, turn any light armor into silk

[marsh garden]

yup!

it's a real good hearthstone

[bleak hazel]

that is at least a reason to differentiate light-armour from no-armour martial arts, since normally it's just a matter of +1 merit dot one way or the other

[marsh garden]

i'm really chuffed by my lunar, they're a meathead no moon with thousand wounds gear and a jackdaw spirit shape

with headwings

an itty bitty crest

really excited to try out thousand wounds (i guess thousand wings murder, in creation) + flying guillotine

but that won't be for a while

their current spell list consists entirely of Flight of Separation and ISOB

and will continue to until they're informed that they can wizard magic bullshit their chakram

[buoyant summit]

Do submodules purchased at chargen count as charms or do they have to be purchased with BP?

[marsh garden]

they're not charms like Keys are, so they gotta be BP

[buoyant summit]

fuckin damn it...

[marsh garden]

which ones did you want at CC?

i assume a stat replacer or two?

[buoyant summit]

The strength for attacks and parries, perception for evasion, and appearance for guile ones

Mostly so I can have decent parry, evade, and guile without

you know

dexterity or manip

because this character we have decided, in our infinite folly

is mental primary despite being our group's designated Brick Shithouse

[marsh garden]

understrandable

well, 6xp submods are as efficient as buying an unfavored charm

and 3xp submods are the same as buying merits, which is...percentage-wise, a lot behind favored charms, but not huge in actual amount

[buoyant summit]

We need four submods, actually

[marsh garden]

ah rip

[buoyant summit]

Well

Do we...

[marsh garden]

well, you could stick it out for the first session or two

[buoyant summit]

We could just be a soakbeast with bad parry and good evade...

[marsh garden]

and assume that you're not going into bad combat

[bleak hazel]

as long as you have one good defence at low essence you're probably fine

it's Autocthonia, it's not like the campaign pitch is going to consist entirely of fistfighting Brawl Sidereals

[fierce star]

I feel like it's only about essence 3w here you really want to worry about it, and even then just having two good and one mid defense is probalby fine

[buoyant summit]

The most evasive motherfucker built like Hildryn you've ever seen

[merry arch]

most guys arent gonna be whippin out unblockables or undodgeables, yea

[marsh garden]

it also cuts down on the necessity of having like

eleven TPAs installed

[bleak hazel]

yeah, it's rare that peer opponents at E1/2 hit you with the

[marsh garden]

if you just go STR to hit, APP to guile

[bleak hazel]

at E3 they start becoming way more common, but at that point you can have your pseudoperfect

alch psuedoperfect really good

[marsh garden]

and even those you prob won't need session 1

so you can buy them with your post-session 1 xp

(or session 3 if you're busy bees)

submods only take a day to train, and presumably you can get them all at once

esp. since they're all towards TPA

[bleak hazel]

I'm trying to think of where low essence unblockables are outside the Sid charmset that I have nearly 100% memorised and I'm mostly coming up blank

[marsh garden]

nowhere, sids have special boy privileges there

[bleak hazel]

Sid Brawl and Sid Archery have 'em

oh, sorcery

lots of undodgeables there

less unblockables

[marsh garden]

no unblockables!

you need flesh-sloughing wave in necro for that

[prisma sun]

I think every Deeb Unblockable is E3

[bleak hazel]

my first ever Sid game involved the entire party getting BBQed by an E4 fire dragon stylist, but usually your enemies aren't winding up the E4 charms at E1 + 10xp

(we lived, in ox body we trust)

[prisma sun]

Lunars do actually get an E2 unblockable

Which is also an AoE

https://i.imgur.com/KpF26Vp.png

[marsh garden]

fun fact: lunars have zero damaging unblockables except at e5 against crashed enemies, or if you have Leaping Pounce

[prisma sun]

A lot of unblockable in the Lunar stam tree

[prisma sun]

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

[marsh garden]

they have two poison blood attacks, the Maul A Crashed Enemy To Death one at e5, and Mighty Behemoth Leap

oh huh

[prisma sun]

I was reading that as you said that

for peak comedy

[bleak hazel]

sometimes I wish the feats of demolition table was a little more dramatic, I want to melt the map with acid

[marsh garden]

i wish it was a lot more dramatic

[buoyant summit]

We think we may have fucked ourselves making a very insular character for what is a very outgoing caste apparently

[marsh garden]

i don't understand why a ten strength character didn't need twenty successes to smash through a castle wall

why is it 10 str...15? 18? sux to bend open a portcullis

that's like, classic fantasy troll shit to batter through metal gates

[buoyant summit]

Well

We did make this Adamant a machine saint and therefore priest

[prisma sun]

I think the main thing is that the core devs I think had in their heads a completely different idea of what "increasing range bands on feats of strength" actually entailed

[buoyant summit]

And they're on the frontline against the Blight

[prisma sun]

And then just really failed to let us know what that was

[buoyant summit]

So I guess they could work as a chaplain

type deal

[marsh garden]

"10 str 18 sux to split a boulder"

what the fuck kind of boulder is that tanky

[marsh garden]

what do you want all the guile for btw

[buoyant summit]

To not have bad social defenses?

Their Manip is 1

[marsh garden]

but like, you're a priest

[bleak hazel]

this is again why CMOS is blessed because it just lets you go "fuck it, death to the scenery" without buying 5000 FOS charms first

[marsh garden]

what do you need to lie about?

[buoyant summit]

A priest who's secretly undergoing a crisis of faith

[marsh garden]

ah

[bleak hazel]

but I admit I'd like a bit more Exalted collateral damage

[buoyant summit]

and therefore needs to lie to others that 'no, I don't think I'm a bad priest'

[marsh garden]

ic

[buoyant summit]

Though

idk maybe they're not as deep in that mindset as they used to be

cuz one of the Ministers would have to have sussed out the crisis as part of judging them for Machine Sainthood

[marsh garden]

i wish it wasn't "lol, get fucked, the one thing strength is good for"

but i do appreciate that it actually allows you to explode things

[wise ocean]

strength deals damage and gives me more vbos dice 👍

[prisma sun]

I mean Sids have multiple ways to just not use strength for FoS

[marsh garden]

yes, sids

there are a lot more splats than just sids

[prisma sun]

Only one splat should be using CMOS

https://tenor.com/view/gun-cock-chris-conner-poe-altered-carbon-bring-it-on-gif-16310479

[marsh garden]

infernals, agreed

[prisma sun]

Solaroids got their days numbered...

[buoyant summit]

first attempt at Adamant attributes and abilitiiiiiiieeeeeesssss

[marsh garden]

need one dot in brawl for MA

unless alchs skip that too?

[fierce star]

They do

[buoyant summit]

Perfected Style Matrix said 'fuck Brawl'

[marsh garden]

gotcha

[fierce star]

Alchs say 'fuck your prereqs we do it live'

[buoyant summit]

WOOOOOOOOOOO

[marsh garden]

makes sense, since it's a permanent charm slot

cheap as hell though

[fierce star]

even terrestrial circle sorcery for them is 'int 3 ess 1 no prereqs'

[marsh garden]

yeah, quite nice

[buoyant summit]

Is this ass tho

Oh

And this is before inputting the transpuissants etc etc etc

[marsh garden]

hm, do you need both dodge 5 and MA 5? i feel like you'd want some socialize for your guile

since you mentioned caring about that

although maybe you could just steal from athletics

[buoyant summit]

We decided Guile just

isn't worth it

[marsh garden]

fair lmao

it is a lot of investment to get there from CC, with all the other stuff you're trying to juggle

[buoyant summit]

look we're making a martial artist sorcerer priest XD

[marsh garden]

oh yeah, i feel the pain

if you're not a sid with the huge pile of free dots and replacers, that's so much to keep spinning

well, at least the pile of replacers will get easier for you once you've got some AXP stocked

[buoyant summit]

tru

We are getting 3 transpuissant submods at chargen tho, with the last of our bp

Strength to attack, strength to movement actions, perception to parry

[marsh garden]

eking it out

(i think it's per to eva, sta to parry)

[buoyant summit]

Right

per to eva

[marsh garden]

(but yeah, ik what you mean)

[buoyant summit]

is Eva 6 necessary, or will Eva 5 be fine?

Asking cuz if we go with Dodge 4, which will reduce Eva to 5

That gives us 4 more bp for submods

[merry arch]

looks fine. abilities at 5 is pretty expensive. if you're getting a transpuissant intelligence or wits bumping down occult from 5 to 4 wouldn't hurt you that much and would free up some bp to spread it into socialize or something else for derived stats

[marsh garden]

ehhh

otoh, this is the cheapest occ 5 will ever be

[prisma sun]

Man Puissant is a phrase that I will never get hitched up on on a first read

[marsh garden]

i'm not super cheesed about Exalted's love of it lmao

it's a sometimes word

[merry arch]

evasion 5 is fine imo

[marsh garden]

too much Perfect Puissant Thews

[buoyant summit]

So far the transpuissant (yes yes I know) plans are a Strength, a Perception, and prooooobably an Int?

[marsh garden]

that makes sense

you need the str and per slotted for your combat chassis, and int is just

nice to have if you're a sorc

[prisma sun]

I have realized I need to make an addendum to the Supreme Creature inspiration sheet

[coral wraith]

I mean Sids suffer this exact same thing with how many stats you need to juggle, replacers only do much

Grinning Mask only makes it work due to Flying Guillotine

[prisma sun]

I fucked it up a little bit

but still

it gets across

[velvet raft]

Getting all of the Dex replacers as a sid is like 4 charms, for 32 xp, vs. just getting dex up to 5, which is 40

[marsh garden]

sorry, i'm talking specifically the confluence of wizard-and-martial-artist that sids slot into more easily because of free MA and old realm combined with the ability to take reasonably generous defense replacers, not the general high investment necessary for like, omnicompetence

and not easily, just like

the extra costs kind of scale with each other

[buoyant summit]

Admittedly

We are making a sorcerer because Alch charms confuse and scare us

This is some weird shit

[buoyant summit]

Also wait is that a fucking Uma Musume girl up in here?

[marsh garden]

alch charms scare and arouse me, thankfully minimal confusion now

[chilly sluice]

it's TM Opera O

[marsh garden]

is that an uma name

it sounds like it

or ig a horse name

[mighty rover]

yes

the Centurial Overlord and greatest aura farmer to ever do it

[buoyant summit]

Should we even make a sorcerer...?

hhhnnngghhhhhh brain hurt

[prisma sun]

"YOUNG WERTHERS WHO SEEK TO SHATTER MY GOLDEN AGE, STAND PROUD!"
"FOR YOU HAVE THE PRIVELAGE OF FALLING BEFORE ME"

-Actual Dialogue From That Horse Girl

[marsh garden]

I'm glad the horse girl fans are having fun

[prisma sun]

I still know basically nothing about Uma Musume

[marsh garden]

more than i do

[prisma sun]

but by virtue of their commitment to making a lot of their anime girls into fucking freaks there's a lot of very niche character tropes presented that allow you to point at them and go "my freak's like this"

[buoyant summit]

🐴 I think at this point we're bouncing off the fact that Charms for Alchs are installed, physical, and technological things

[marsh garden]

i just know haru urara is a sad pathetic loser who loves life

[marsh garden]

aw i love that

[buoyant summit]

And not really getting over the hump of our own opinions about transhumanism and religion

[marsh garden]

"my basic str enhancer isn't me Being Cooler, i have a pile bunker"

fair

[buoyant summit]

Where here we're trying to make a character for whom those things are necessarily and deeply interlinked

Which

In a way is a good thing

We are reexamining our biases

But

[coral wraith]

What do you mean?

[prisma sun]

Weirdly enough I don't find Alchemical's transhumanism that offensive

[buoyant summit]

We wish that shit wasn't getting in the way of picking 15 fucking charms AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[prisma sun]

I think it's because the power dynamic is dealt with and also the Alchemical is considered their own unique individual

[buoyant summit]

We haven't really examined the fact we are both transhumanists and deeply spiritual

And are uncovering a bunch of contradictory unexamined bullshit that's buried itself in our psyche since our teen years that is making it very hard to write this motherfucker

[buoyant summit]

Oh we aren't offended by it at all, we're like... involuntarily unable to grasp it fully?

Our own brain is the problem here

[prisma sun]

I wasn't saying you were, but I've been getting into rows over EP's transhumanism

(EP = Eclipse Phase)

[buoyant summit]

Ah

[marsh garden]

my personal beliefs prevent me from enjoying EP, but it's such a cool setting

[prisma sun]

Sorta where I'm at

[buoyant summit]

🐮I think I've got why we're struggling so much

[prisma sun]

I don't wanna relitigate because I am trying to cut down me doing the Same Arguments Forever Unprompted but I just have a very different view of the self and the importance of the self than the authors of EP do

[buoyant summit]

We are imagining this character as fundamentally deficient for their role, or at least they believe so

But that's butted up against the fact that, well

No

That's not how Alchemicals work

They literally build themselves to be better

[marsh garden]

yeah, that's about my "problem", such as it is, with it

[buoyant summit]

perfectionism

[marsh garden]

my opinions on continuity are different

[buoyant summit]

This motherfucker struggles with perfectionism

[marsh garden]

in a way that prevents me from comfortably accepting the mandatory buy-in

[marsh garden]

i think that's actually a great place for a character to be, honestly

[buoyant summit]

They believe they will never be a perfect Alchemical, able to fully perform their utterly necessary role as synapse and antibody for the body of their God, because they would reject the idea of becoming a Colossi or Metropolis

[marsh garden]

because it can be a neurose that you are both defying and enabling at every point

each time you change yourself, each time you optimize out a flaw or create a new tool to make yourself better, you can still go "this wasn't enough"

"it didn't fix me"

[bleak hazel]

becoming a colossus is something of a long-term goal, to be fair

[marsh garden]

and that's a compelling internal dynamic

[buoyant summit]

And that feeds into Clarity

And Misc I would be surprised if you did not eventually start Caravettaposting if this conversation dragged long enough

[bleak hazel]

you have a long time for robot therapy considering you get to the point you can start that process at the same XP level where Rival, for instance, is completely done, build functionally complete

nah, he's not an interesting alchemical at all

the closest character to him is my Infernal

[buoyant summit]

The narrative I intend is for this character to accept that not wanting to become a Colossus or Metropolis is

Fine

That they are a full person

Not just an agent for one of the Octet or the Ministers or Autochthon himself

[prisma sun]

I feel like the vast majority of Alchemicals don't

[fierce star]

I feel like the vast majority don't become metropoli, definitely

but like,b ecoming ac olossus is 4 XP and extra time in the vats and is fully, if not quickly, reversible

[buoyant summit]

Even if offered the chance to, even if ordered to by Auto himself, they could not bring themselves to do it

They find the idea existentially horrifying

And that's where the perfectionist guilt comes from

[marsh garden]

that's valid! that's a good internal conflict to have

fucked up emotionally contradictory flaws good

[prisma sun]

I don't wanna tell you how to RP your character Rhi, but I have some minor writing critique if you would like to hear it

[fierce star]

oh yeah not saying it's not valid, I just think J. Average Essence 5 alchemical (as much as there are average ess 5 anything) probably has the charm even if they don't sit inc olossus form

sorry

[bleak hazel]

J. Average E5 Alch with a massive support budget even by Alchemical standards, at least

[marsh garden]

my dusk has a major negative intimacy towards the idea of the nobility, but has yet to square his own idea of that with...the fucking Realm, because he's from Paragon and his entier idea of that is its, and so that's been acting as an emotional time bomb involving my Deathlord and Dynast buddy

[bleak hazel]

Colossi are supercarrier expenses if not more so

[marsh garden]

internal inconsistency lets you fuck yourself bad and i love it

[bleak hazel]

(which is not represented mechanically because state austerity preventing you from spending XP is silly)

[buoyant summit]

sure...?

[prisma sun]

I think you could easily expand the anxiety this character feels if you went past just the idea of Colossi, and more about the ask of martyrdom inherent in the role of an Alchemical.

You were created, fundamentally, to die a most likely painful death for the service of Authocthonian

And your reward for surviving that is to lose your self regardless

I think there's a lot of room for playing up that anxiety by making Colossi-ship a facet of a greater whole

[buoyant summit]

Fair point

You know what would be a fun but stupid and pointless charm

One for if you get the resonance charms to be resonant with every magical material

[prisma sun]

I do think there should be means for non-solaroids to do so yeah

I personally run that if you are personally resonant with the themes of a weapon, you can attune regardless of Exalt

[velvet raft]

Alchs have a charm for that

The materials, I mean

[buoyant summit]

No I know

That's the charm I was referencing

What would a charm that requires you, as an Alch

[velvet raft]

Oh you mean a charm with all of them as a prereq

[buoyant summit]

To be resonant with all magical materials like

Do

Ye

[marsh garden]

like the equivalent of the five ox-bodies charm that deebs get!

that'd be fun

[velvet raft]

The reward would need to be wild to be worth it

[buoyant summit]

Yeah cuz Resonance by itself isn't, like

useful

[marsh garden]

yeah, you probably only need it like twice lol

max

[buoyant summit]

And that's for a really weird build

[marsh garden]

your caste + maybe two off-type artifacts

and that's a strong maybe

[velvet raft]

Honestly the charm that grants resonance could stand to be souped up

[marsh garden]

would be boring, but free evo unlocks?

just like

fold their other options for that into it

give em free evos every story + more

[prisma sun]

I generally find "XP manipulation" charms to be very opaque

[marsh garden]

that's fair, but the cat's outta the bag there lmao

i think abyssals and deebs are the only splats without a giant pile of xp manipulation

[prisma sun]

Just because people did bad things in the past doesn't make us beholden to them forevermore >:c

end nuclear proliferation now............

[marsh garden]

lunars have their working gubbins, alchs can already get evos, infernals get free workings and free evos, solars have Socialize

[velvet raft]

Lunars have some interesting bullshit around evocations, iirc

[marsh garden]

yeah, they can walk out of a forge with a half-built artifact

and i believe sids get free evos off of their weapon RD charm?

[prisma sun]

Abyssals technically get XP manipulation in their ability to yoink out a 3 dot artifact whenever the fuck they wish

[marsh garden]

oh nope, guess not

[prisma sun]

Deebs also get

[marsh garden]

that's not xp manip in the way i was thinking

[prisma sun]

ssssssssomething

[marsh garden]

that's craft points manip

[prisma sun]

I remember

[bleak hazel]

Sids and Lunars have very few ways to game this

[marsh garden]

so deebs sids abyssals have no xp manip

solars have fucking sins

[bleak hazel]

white points spent on prophecies, sorcerous workings and craft dots, that's it

[marsh garden]

infernals have slightly fewer sins

lunars have the working roulette and free evos off half-built artifacts

alchs have one of the infernals' sins

(craft points as xp for evos)

[bleak hazel]

Alchs and Infernals have the most playable version due to having that white point sink, yeah

[buoyant summit]

Should we make this a crafter and not a sorcerer...

[bleak hazel]

it's usable if a bit gamey in a way I dislike

[marsh garden]

i would say that solars have the most "playable" version because that soc tree is gigafucked

[coral wraith]

The only thing I'd class as XP manip for Sids is being able to take a Pattern Spider who has some free horoscopes. That's it tho

[bleak hazel]

Solars are unplayable (too broken) in that department

the Lore XP reactor is generally not sane

I'm giving the Infernal Craft version a go because I'm interested in seeing how it works

[marsh garden]

wait, they have a lore one too?

oh nyo

[bleak hazel]

will take a very long time before I have the charms and essence levels necessary to spend white points on evos though

oh the lore one in solars is by far the strongest

their craft one is Alch/Infernal grade

their lore one lets you spend XP on teaching people and then recoup more than you spent, in essence

[marsh garden]

ough

[bleak hazel]

so every story you apply a multiplier to the amount of XP you have and keep stacking it

[marsh garden]

jesus

[bleak hazel]

all future training effects are merely XP debt like they should be

[marsh garden]

we need to banish solars to the void

and here i thought getting +75% xp from socialize was egregious (it is)

[tulip folio]

Does this read okay?

[marsh garden]

i think this is quite cute as a manip charm

not a huge fan of the name, though

"baldrdeath" just doesn't really...flow, to me

and referencing baldr without his presence as a character in Exalted like Balor is also feels wonky

but i like the actual effect, and it's got fun places to jump off of for charm advances

[tulip folio]

Manipulation's art for Wanderers is 'Contract', so most of their non-social manipulation charms are 'I made a pact with something'.

[prisma sun]

Swear Upon The Mistletoe or something that references it could be fine

but yeah I agree with topple

[limpid badge]

“Oath of Mistletoe” sounds good on the tongue

[tulip folio]

Makes sense.

I'll admit, the name came last as I had the effect first

[limpid badge]

That’s super fair

[tulip folio]

And it needed a name to toss at people

The inspiration was entertainingly one of the treasures from Changeling.

Excalibur's Sheathe.

Which is Fuckbusted.

'I can't be killed by anything that spills blood oh and since it's a changeling artifact, if you can't see chimerical things, you don't know I have it. A werewolf will ragdoll me about all day without doing permanent harm'

[marsh garden]

Avalon's blessing is pretty good!

[tulip folio]

Yeah. I thought I could get a similar 'vibe' with the 'downgrade lethal to bashing' as while you can get knocked out, a thing you're pacted vs finds it very hard to kill you.

Stormwalker's Stride
Cost: —; Mins: Stamina 3, Essence 1
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None
Shielded by her mastery of the elements and skin hardened by long marches, the Wanderer is relentless.

The Wanderer can can use Stamina instead of Dexterity for movement actions. When she rolls to resist an Environmental Hazard, she can always use (Stamina + [Resistance, Survival or Sail]) instead of any other attribute or ability.

And the Possible Entry charm for it if you want it as a stamina charm. One of the 'swap the used stat' charms for Wanderers.

Not super fancy but could be useful if you're stamina instead of dex heavy.

Stamina + Charisma is a very tanky combo for Wanderers.

[tulip folio]

Sidhe Chevalier
Cost: —; Mins: Charisma 3, Essence 1
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None
Drawing upon tales of wandering forces and knights errant, the Wanderer garbs her shield-arm in stories of protection

The Wanderer can use Charisma instead of Dexterity to calculate Parry and to make Unhorse Gambits. When Wielding a Heavy Melee weapon, its Defence is +1 instead of its usual value.

[marsh garden]

hidden horse style...

[tulip folio]

Lake-Knight's Charge
Cost: 4m, 1wp; Mins: Dexterity 4, Essence 2
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Decisive-only
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites: Thing
Silence shatters the clamour of battle as foes watch their champion humbled.

The Wanderer supplements a Decisive Smashing attack, Impaling Attack or an Unhorse Gambit, doubling 10s on the initiative roll. An unhorse gambit supplemented with this charm reduces its difficulty by 1 and can affect unmounted targets (Dealing damage and knocking them prone as normal).

An enemy damaged this way cannot take command or influence actions until the end of his next turn and suffers a (Wanderer's -Essence/2, rounded up) on his command actions and influence rolls for the rest of the scene. This ends if he crashes or incapacitates the Wanderer.

Keys:

Goliath Toppling Stone: Legendary Size foes may be knocked back or prone normally by attacks supplemented with this charm.

Cornerstone Shattering Blow (Essence 3): Enemy battle groups in the combat under a damaged target's command suffer (Wanderer's Essence) dice of unsoakable withering damage. A battlegroup that makes a rout check as a result of this damage does so at +1 difficulty.

Sorcerer Piercing Lance (Essence 3): A character damaged this way loses all accumulated sorcerous and necromantic motes, cannot take Shape Sorcery actions until the end of his next turn and suffers a (Wanderer's -Essence/2, rounded up) on Shape Sorcery rolls for the rest of the scene. This ends if he crashes or incapacitates the Wanderer.

[velvet raft]

Mortalgame yesterday good

One of the PCs was appointed satrap of the Lap

She insists this is temporary

[marsh garden]

...that's prestigious

[velvet raft]

She's a Ledaal, and in this game it's a Ledaal satrapy and the house is hurting for funds

We're trying to Find The Money

[marsh garden]

ahh

[velvet raft]

To organize this whole Wyld Hunt business

[marsh garden]

what are y'all Hunting?

or trying to

[velvet raft]

Apparently there's an Anathema that shows every 25 years or so to try to break into this particular tomb

So it's an unusual hunt, more defensive than anything

We need to put together forces to defend the tomb and prevent it from being unsealed

[marsh garden]

huh! is it a solar, lunar, fae?

[velvet raft]

Unknown!

Unfortunately for us there's no money. Ledaal is strapped for cash and fighters because the Realm is in turmoil, and the tyrant princeps who was charging high taxes was ousted a few years ago and replaced by his hyper-competent nephew, who has run an extremely tight ship and reduced taxation a lot

There are enough mercenaries in and around the lap to make up a fighting force, but we gotta pay them

Nellens and Cynis were supposed to help and they sent respectively one and three mortals (I'm the one) >_>

[marsh garden]

lmao

[velvet raft]

The mercenaries had heard so many bad rumors that they weren't initially willing to take money for the hunt even if we had it (we resolved this problem with a fistfight)

(But now we need the money)

Also the princeps is suspiciously hypercompetent and has some kind of spy who is definitely superhuman

So OOC we think both of them are exalts >_>

[velvet raft]

Oh and one of our party members is secretly working for the princeps's spy

She recruited him

So basically we've gotta raise money from a Good And Popular Ruler to deal with an enemy we do not fully understand and we've gotta do it now-ish because we are on a timeline

And the good and popular ruler has a court musician who can leap tall buildings in two bounds

[marsh garden]

oh they're a full Circle, huh

[velvet raft]

Naw the court musician is the spy

[marsh garden]

ahh

[velvet raft]

Lots of set up for when we presumably are less overwhelmingly outmatched by everything

The previous satrap got sick, and my group was speculating, "oh maybe it was the Lunar disease line, or what about Citrine Poxes of Contagion?" I had to note, "I think if we are dealing with someone who can use CPOC we may be a tiny bit outmatched".

[marsh garden]

lmao

yeah you can just kinda

get somebody sick

it's not that hard if you've got access to A Rat Stylist, or A Lunar, or A Sorcerer (to summon a demon)

and they're a mortal who can't easily contest

[velvet raft]

A rat stylist can just punch a guy so hard they get sepsis

[marsh garden]

a rat stylist can do that without a punch!

just scratch em with your finger needle in a social scene

[velvet raft]

White Veil?

Or does rat use hand needles?

[marsh garden]

rat uses hand needles!

[velvet raft]

Man, Rat King's Secret Art is crazy good

[marsh garden]

its name goes crazy hard

and it's worthy of that name

[tulip folio]

Rat is very fun. Rat/White Veil has very funny tonal dissonance but fantastic synergy.

'I am classy and respectable and you'd never thing I'd DIRTY SHANK KNIFE TO KIDNEYS!'

[marsh garden]

i remembered Rat uses hand needles because an antagonist in one of gazetteer's fics is a Rat/White Veil lunar

[velvet raft]

Rat + Ebon Shadow is wild

[marsh garden]

oozing with flavor too

[tulip folio]

I did a Secret Technique for rat a while ago to broaden it a hair

[velvet raft]

Numberless Blows Technique is still my favorite MA pinnacle charm but Rat King's Secret Art is probably number two

[marsh garden]

i like Falcon's for the visual imagery

[velvet raft]

Rat King's Secret Art I cannot imagine without the name getting stamped on the screen in kanji

[marsh garden]

When an attuned wielder Reflexively retrieves Forbidden Sun with its Special property, she may pay three motes to detonate the caged sun. This deals (lower of Essence or 3) unsoakable withering damage to a character within close range of the hammer, or (Essence + 1, maximum 5) Magnitude damage to a battle group. Forbidden Sun is compatible with Fire Dragon Style, but can't combine Fire Dragon Charms with other Martial Arts Charms unless they're compatible with both short swords and meteor hammers.
hm, does this seem reasonable for the attunement of a red jade meteor hammer? i want something to do with detonating the heads as you pull them back, but i'm having a bit of trouble figuring out exactly how i want to implement it

[marsh garden]

also yeah, one hundred fucking percent

Rat King's Secret Art: Death of a Thousand Fangs gets plastered in red against an all-black screen for a split second

[velvet raft]

Exactly

[marsh garden]

in both kanji and english letters

[velvet raft]

With centipede I'm slowly developing a sense of how I want to stunt it

Many small blows on withering followed by single big decisives

Man there's so many cool MAs -_-

How can I learn them all

[marsh garden]

i didn't know anys syn liked lancer

[coral wraith]

Birdsong Over Blades is so funny

take my anuhle venom please and thank you

[velvet raft]

Is that Nightingale?

[coral wraith]

no?

white veil

[velvet raft]

Oh okay

Was just guessing based on the name

[coral wraith]

its the one that applies venom and/or deleterious effects on a decisive attack without doing damage, resetting initiative or revealing you attacked at all

Mastery applies a penalty of -Manipulation on any resist rolls

[marsh garden]

the timing there is so fucking odd

because you do it reflexively in response to a successful attack

but then retroactively the target didn't notice the attack

so like, they know that the attack's coming and can defend against it...until it's hit, and then they skyrim guard it up

and go "must have been the wind"

[coral wraith]

you kinda just gotta buy in to the premise

i dont mind it

[marsh garden]

i just think the timing's wonky

and it should've been a supplemental charm

that applies to the attack in general

[coral wraith]

anyway

if you succeed on applying the venom you can reduce the average no-socialize dawn/dusk caste to like, 1 or 2 dice on their JB

it's great

[velvet raft]

A fun second style for my currently-mortal might be White Reaper, come to think of it

[marsh garden]

oh huh, is centipede compatible with spears? or do you do full unarmed

[velvet raft]

I would go full unarmed

That is my eventual ambition

But the two strike me as having decent synergy

[marsh garden]

makes sense

[velvet raft]

I do wish White Reaper were less tethered to its form charm

[marsh garden]

i like that about it, but fair

[velvet raft]

Well, it's just that since so many of the charms really depend on halos to do stuff, and you can only have halos in-form

[marsh garden]

yeah, it just means that white reaper is always the centerpiece of any build with it

which i think is fitting for how musou it is

[velvet raft]

Or at least it's what you're going to switch into for its use case

Mainly it makes it slightly awkward for high-essence sids, I think

But that's true to some extent of all styles that really love their form charms

(And for lower-essence sids who have finished a style like this and are moving into a different style)

A lunar or alch with White Reaper would slap, I think, even missing out on Mastery

[marsh garden]

i am interested in making a white reaper lunar, it's true

[velvet raft]

Orichalcum-caste white reaper alch using the various electrification and heat charms

Can't Touch This

[marsh garden]

str alch charms look so fucking cool

i love their bane venom charm and soulsteel piston pile bunker

[marsh garden]

are there any splat-agnostic tools (MA or artifacts, mostly) that let you do dexless stealth?

[tulip folio]

Not that I can think of.

[marsh garden]

damn

trying to figure out how to make the stupidest oadenol's wheel build

[velvet raft]

White Veil Form

Lets you do it with Manipulation

One of the only Dexless stealth tricks I'm aware of

[marsh garden]

ah sick, thanks

hm...

[velvet raft]

There's also one in Sid Dodge

[marsh garden]

how do martial arts forms that just buff you wholesale work with incompatible weapons?

are you hard banned from using the Wrong Weapon for anything?

[velvet raft]

They proooobably work as long as you're not trying to use any benefits of the style with the weapon itself

[marsh garden]

oh yeah i know sids get a replacer there, replacers are one of their favorite tricks

hmm

so i could, say, use white veil and enter stealth with manip, and then bonk people over the head with a greathammer

[velvet raft]

I guess

[marsh garden]

because the two "sections" don't overlap

i ask because i'm back on the abyssal athletics bullshit

[velvet raft]

You'd be spending like four charms and an action at the start of each fight for the benefit, so I'm not sure it's actually worth it

But I think it does work

[marsh garden]

ah damn, you can't be in white veil precombat?

[velvet raft]

I guess you might be able to depending on circumstances? But it's got the normal one scene duration

[marsh garden]

that works! it's supposed to be a social scene showstopper

ruined world armament + abyssal thrown with oadenol's wheel, just trying to figure out ways to not be a one-trick with crimson gala massacre

[velvet raft]

You can always pick up Brutish Violent Thingy as a backup

[marsh garden]

eventually, yeah, but i gotta pick up some soc charms first

anyway thank you, white veil should be a good backup

along with stealth

[tulip folio]

Abeille, Assault Factory Administrator
A tall, apian figure of stunning gold and zirconium with wings of gently pulsing light, few immediately recognise Abeille as the daughter of Debok Moom, Divine Minister of War. Her tone is polite and her touch gentle, the subminister proving rather a social butterfly among the octet cities she moves through with almost aristocratic class. Most do not see the true her docked with her Panzer Hive, a massive submodule that can produce near endless swarms of drones to do her bidding.

Very much the creation of her progenitor, Abeille is the incarnation of logistics and industrial conflict. She is the death of great heroes under the weight of a thousand nameless swords and the grinding down of brilliant generals under the unrelenting facts of cold, heartless mathematics. Never far from the frontlines, she meets the approaching tide of gremlins with endless swarms of drone weapons and quiet, logical calculations.

Cold but not cruel, she has earned great respect from the mortals she defends with her strategems and analysis. She understands that open callousness impedes the function of mortals and that they take at least a decade to be combat ready, while her drones can be produced in mere seconds. This makes her fellow combatants much less disposable than that of her own drones, leaving her to shield her allies with their bodies. Despite that, however, she will not hesitate to sacrifice mortals or even machine saints if she estimates the prize is worth the cost.

There are some among the Theomachy however who see Abeille with suspicion, believing her to be on the path to becoming Apostate herself. She has expressed a great fascination with necromancy and its ability to endlessly repurpose ex-mortals into new drone combatants in a way that so far Autochthonia has not managed to achieve with living mortals. She has been acting subtly, trading favours and assistance for necromantic relics and the texts of forbidden magical sects, so that she may better understand her fascination.

I am making a Second Circle Machine Spirit.

[fierce star]

oh boy, that's not horrifying at all

[tulip folio]

What could possibly be a problem? 😛

[bleak hazel]

silly combo of the day, courtest of the exalted discord this time

by the power of Sid Doc and Infernal Doc, the world's fastest and least practical healing duo

[tulip folio]

Hahahaha

[bleak hazel]

1. poison patient with something nonfatal, like snake venom
2. blast the snake venom with nuclear radiation until patient incurs minor burns
3. have a Sidereal silversmith pour a crucible of molten silver all over the wound, it won't hurt I promise
4. all better!

[next delta]

You'd still have the aggravated wounds though right?

[bleak hazel]

yeah, but everything else is gone, so you get to be up and about with minor non-wound-penalty chip damage for the next day or two rather than lying prone waiting for the silver to harden

[next delta]

Oh, I guess you also get to keep getting quickly healed throughout the day too lol

[tulip folio]

Yeah as ot doesn't care of the injury being cured it caused by eof

[marsh garden]

just combine it with Let the Doomed Dance lmao

[next delta]

I'm guessing the healing being instant only ignores the day recovery and not the hour of activity

[tulip folio]

Just that an eof has put damage on the track

[marsh garden]

and give them a free fake -0 as a wacky Weirdo Disney Doctor song-montage

while you're purging their everything

[next delta]

The Sidereal might have to answer Some Questions for why they are running around with an enemy of fate though

[fierce star]

'Her exact words for 'I don't give a shit about malfeas, that place smells funny, heaven has better buffets', sir.'

[marsh garden]

don't ask questions you don't want answers to

[bleak hazel]

you can also just have the infernal punch the patient a few times but that's more risky than radiotherapy

you can also use their mutation granting charm instead to give the patient Subtle Unusual Hide or something and trust in the poison that inflicts to do your chip damage for you

but that requires a few more hours of waiting for poison

[marsh garden]

posting here just in case: does anyone know of ways outside of the architect charm to add the subtle tag?

[tulip folio]

To weapons?

[wise ocean]

beam weapons are Concealable

[marsh garden]

i wish concealable and subtle were the same

[marsh garden]

yeah

i think it's not worth it, though

even if it works

[buoyant summit]

Debating whether I use the fact the base version of bioluminescent is 0 dots to use the Alch mutations charm to make my character's armored plate skin transparent and glowy like this

[buoyant summit]

lmao probably

Oh

This Alch is also weird in that they don't really have a face

Which

Is A Choice!

That is certainly a choice they made

[marsh garden]

ember heirloom alch made by the deranged pervert-city

[buoyant summit]

lmao

So Lux

We're also rather enamoured with and amused by the idea that our character's armor is priestly vestments

But they're priestly vestments of Autochthon

So they're Holy Techwear

[marsh garden]

tbh tho ignoring the fact that it's bare robot ass wearing thigh-highs and a crop top and nothing else, like

the cosmic stardust patterns you can get on the heirloom flesh are so pretty

[buoyant summit]

We forgot how horny Ember's Heirloom is lmao

[marsh garden]

it's really horny

[marsh garden]

lord forgive me what i am about to do

[bleak hazel]

ah, No Defences Georg

[buoyant summit]

what the fuck

[chilly sluice]

huh

[bleak hazel]

trying to figure out a good capstone for Telek's five malfean elemental spears

[prisma sun]

As In The Beginning But Demons?

[bleak hazel]

it's tempting

Fivefold Blasphemy of Hell

[buoyant summit]

As In The Beginning?

[bleak hazel]

dragonblooded spirit bomb

[buoyant summit]

Ahhhhh

[marsh garden]

i'm trying to find defenses somewhere 😭

it just ain't showing up

also yeah As in the Beginning is deebs' coolest charm

with the coolest name

it goes crazy hard

[bleak hazel]

(I have cropped the two pages of elemental effects but trust me if you have five deebs contributing elemental aura to this one it makes Third Circle hazard charms look like little bitches, since it applies five of them at once)

[marsh garden]

and if you have a Perfect Circle, it's uhhh

pretty good!

each element contributed is a different half-page effect

all of those half-pages are like

"D5 7 damage plus three narrative-scale devastation effects"

fire is instead three hazards lmao

[bleak hazel]

you know since these are Telek's spears, forged out of his soul, there may be some drip in "giant elemental kaboom, and then the radius of the explosion terraforms into his devil-body"

[marsh garden]

that sounds pretty rad, yeah

[bleak hazel]

it's a literal Reverse Blasphemy charm, instead of using it when you go DBA, you use it and then go DBA, with a stupid radius

since his devil-body is already a landscape form

instead of long range it's a literal five mile radius Futile Blood mindscape

[buoyant summit]

Wait a Devil Body can be a fuckin landscape?

[marsh garden]

yeah, it's one of the cheaper options

[prisma sun]

Yeah

[marsh garden]

devil-bodies are 1/story win the scene

and aura farm while doing it

[bleak hazel]

yeah, Telek has Domain Expansion

other options are available but honestly it's really hard to pass up the sheer drip of landscape-form

the successor to the old best shintai, Greater Shintai of the Endless Desert

[buoyant summit]

🐲 I think this might be my acid-rocker's devil body

[marsh garden]

i'm still buttmad that it's an entire 3c necro spell but better for free at e1 without sacrificing anything

but it is cool

[bleak hazel]

Telek has Expansive Form + Legendary Size, although I might take the charm that adds some dots so I can get Divided Focus + Adaptive Defence

oh yeah it's cracked as hell

if I had my druthers it would replace Supernal entirely because it's so insanely good

but man is it badass

[marsh garden]

yeah

solars get supernal + omni-res, abyssals get supernal, infernals get supernal + devil-body + inner world + soul pantheon + omni-res

someone is the favorite

and i wish i didn't salt about everything because every single part of that is so fucking cool

but it's just so much more

once i play an infernal i'll have a blast with it

but it does make me salt

[bleak hazel]

the hilarious thing about Legendary Size + Expansive Form is that Legendary Size's bonuses apply against smaller enemies and even your average warstrider or tyrant lizard is a lot smaller than the landscape body

[marsh garden]

yeah, you're LS++

i can't think of anything other than like, a couple behemoths

that are theoretically going to be on equal scale

[bleak hazel]

in order to beat an infernal with an amped-up devil body you basically need to totally exhaust them before giving them the opportunity to use it at all

which is hard when the E5 capstone is "pop it whenever the fuck you like, have 3-4 boss phases"

[marsh garden]

they just straight up are the protagonist-of-the-universe splat and i would be less peeved about it if the folks would like, acknowledge it

(or i guess antagonist-of-the-universe, but)

[bleak hazel]

(if you cheese it right you can get an instakill torment that punches clean through even the best non-Solar shaping defences, but your ST should slap you for it)

[marsh garden]

anyway, malding over, time to build a fifth infernal

[bleak hazel]

their actual charms are well-balanced, but in terms of scope the tiers are basically Infernals>Solaroids>Celestial>nondeeb Terrestrial>Deeb

(poor deebs, their deficits are entirely due to the curse of linear time because terrestrial exigents are somewhat cooler)

[marsh garden]

i would say it's more infernals > solaroids + sids > celestials > terrestrials > deebs

sids have the narrative scope of a solaroid

and then there's also janest

[bleak hazel]

the celestial exigents are restricted mostly by the fact they just don't have that many charms

[marsh garden]

if only the devs had infinite money, time, and book space

...and interest

[bleak hazel]

I'm not sure Sids match the Solaroids in scope, but they definitely get close because of all their highly esoteric bullshit

Supernal just blows them out of the water at low essence, so only the bigger sids are on that grade

[prisma sun]

I think Lunars and Sids aren't really that much of a gap

[bleak hazel]

Lunars, again, suffer from the curse of linear time

Abyssals and Sids are direct peers, Lunars have powers that are as effective but trees that are a lot more XP-hungry

[wise ocean]

abyssals were new team turning solaroids down and went too far with it, imo

[bleak hazel]

because over time the devs learned to flattten and broaden them to make it easier to get the good stuff

[marsh garden]

a high-essence sid is just kind of fundamentally more important & a bigger deal than a high-essence lunar in 3e, in no small part because lunars kind of just...don't have any High-Scale things

[bleak hazel]

IMO Abyssals are just right, and it's infernals that are a tiny bit over curve

[marsh garden]

they can be a big-ass animal

LS is some shit

but it's just being a big-ass animal, maybe with a couple mutations

[bleak hazel]

mechanically, Lunars can throw down with nearly anyone because their specialties are the strong parts of the combat system - lots of soak, Legendary Size, non-charm base stat stacking

[marsh garden]

their shapeshifting isn't as narratively weighty as things like SMA or third-circle casting or e5 sid charms or some e5 solaroid charms

[wise ocean]

I would agree with this if Solars weren't still unfixed and showed zero signs of being fixed in the future

as it is there's a hill-and-valley for solaroids and Abyssals are at the bottom, not that it matters overmuch cos they're all still solaroids eotf

[marsh garden]

mechanically they're about on par

but your tier list mentioned scope

[bleak hazel]

my go-to for Solaroids is to wipe the black paint off Abyssals and use them, since they're so close, but Infernals are too different

[marsh garden]

and lunars are just lower on the scope scale

bc their high-essence powers are almost all just like

do your low-essence things but better and beefier and sometimes more efficient

with a couple domain-based exceptions

[fierce star]

Lunars really need to leverage their versatility to reach the same level of scope

[marsh garden]

they don't have wyld-shaping technique, or Make A Demesne, or anything in infernal trees past e3

or solar circle sorcery, or SMAs, or the esoteric wildness of sid e5 charms

[fierce star]

the fact that they get normal MA + attribute charms + second circle sorcery AND necromancy + can reasonably infiltrate almost any other organization + excessive self-sufficiency

[marsh garden]

i think alchs are in a pretty similar place to lunars

[fierce star]

a lunar has to stack modifiers to reach narrative scope equivalence basically

[marsh garden]

but

[prisma sun]

Lunars also can just like

[marsh garden]

then they get to be colossi

or cities

[prisma sun]

Show up, win a kingdom in like a day, and then leave

[marsh garden]

so they graduate into the "grand sweeping infinite scope" part with the adamant sorcery/SMA/etc.

yeah, lunars are really good at everything

it's just that they don't have...pinnacle powers? i guess is the term i'd use

[prisma sun]

I think really the main thing they lack is shit like

"Blow up an entire town"

[fierce star]

then again lunars having no narrative scope importance is keeping in theme with all previous editions ofe xalted, so

[bleak hazel]

SMA pinnacles are mostly just facepunching better outside of Citrine Pox, but that might change with World-Spanning Weaver Strike

[marsh garden]

alchs become a mecha, sids physically slap the timestream or punch disease out of your soul or drag The Place A Town Is across creation, solaroids all have 3CS

[prisma sun]

What IS World-Spanning Weaver Strike?

[marsh garden]

the narrative side, rather than the numerical side

Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick i think

unless i'm getting my references mixed up

[bleak hazel]

yes, it's a backer request for Agents of Heaven that is basically "make the Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick balanced"

CSOK being a deliberately silly overpowered combo from 2e that was used as a rhetorical device to show how elder charms were busted

[prisma sun]

I recall CSOK

And that Chejop could do it

[bleak hazel]

so we're getting it as a secret technique now

[marsh garden]

for CMOS, right?

[bleak hazel]

I expect "everyone within (Essence) miles gets kicked in the face" but I imagine it will be more interesting than that

[marsh garden]

which fits considering jumping spider

[bleak hazel]

CSOK was a CMOS combo anyway

[marsh garden]

gotcha

i just know the name

[bleak hazel]

Grandmother Spider Mastery + Pattern Spider Touch + a zillion awareness charms

[marsh garden]

anyway yeah i just think lunars should get to be bigger

genuinely that's all i'd do to solve my perception of their scope problem

just

[bleak hazel]

to produce the combo of "I hit everything I see + I kill everything I hit + I see everything within a comically huge area" respectively

[marsh garden]

let them be permanently even bigger

or more people at the same time

don't give them more esoteric powers

[fierce star]

I believe they can do the latter

[marsh garden]

they can be multiple people! i mean more people

[fierce star]

I know one of their swarm charms lets them be a swarm of htemselves, and I believe it has an upgrade that lets you use any human form in your repetoir

but I'll have to double check that last one

[marsh garden]

(they can also be battle groups of themselves, or do a jank bad fake battle group of yourself thing because it was designed before sids and then abyssals and then infernals all getting to spawn BGs)

[bleak hazel]

that one's actually on par

Faster-Than-Self, the solar one, has jank wording but otherwise all the Battlegroup Thyself E5 effects are direct peers

Solar, Sid, Lunar

[marsh garden]

but i just mean like, permanent extra body like the...god, i can't remember its name

is it an app or manip charm?

that lets you declare Actually, This Person Wasn't Me

but some random bystander i turned into myself

[bleak hazel]

the dumb thing about CSOK other than the fact it was kind of a cracked combo is that 2e deathlords were written with "any Solar Charms or SMAs the ST wants them to have, and they reform with no downsides if you don't use their secret weakness"

[marsh garden]

and i was someone else in the scene

[bleak hazel]

since Solar + SMA elder charms were so strong, this basically meant that RAW FAFL could solo creation

[marsh garden]

or being bigger

[bleak hazel]

walk out, fire off giga combos and delete entire provinces, if somehow killed by Elder Exalts reform for free and do it again

non-Elders need not apply

[fierce star]

lunars are the best at having many mes I feel like still

[marsh garden]

currently their LS benefits take a fuckton of mote sustain

[bleak hazel]

3e has fixed this via the globally agreed on solution of "cap charm power progression at E5"

[marsh garden]

and i think they should just get to be big forever, and/or Even Biggerer

i want Leviathan to be leviathan-sized

[bleak hazel]

I would agree with this if Legendary Size was slightly toned-down mechanically

it's one of those things that is usually too powerful for cost, like stock grapple

(partly because it boosts grapple so much, but also because of the decisive mitigation)

[fierce star]

I'll be honest I have considered doing a minor (minor, he says) rewrite of ex3 lunars to bring forward the stuff I liked from ex2, which would include 'damn near every society that isnt' called The Realm has a lunar somewhere in the past that fucked with it to make it what it is today', but we've had the discussion about my opinions on lunar fluff before

[marsh garden]

hmm, i'm not a huge fan of the idea of lunar shadow government omnipresence

[prisma sun]

We still kinda have that?

The threshold largely is defined by lunars

[marsh garden]

maybe some, but not every civilization ever

well yeah, the threshold

but that's not everywhere in Creation everywhen in Creation

[wise ocean]

PAOC:

[prisma sun]

I mean like

The Realm's borders and expansion are largely defined by Lunars fighting back against it

[bleak hazel]

lunar shadow government presence right now is roughly on par with sid shadow government presence, which I think is about right because it means they have reasons to both feud with each other mercilessly and go "OK, we have a detente here, lets go punch [external threat] in the face"

[bleak hazel]

doesn't break that rule, since Essence progression just grants a few more motes and slightly larger numbers on certain charms

[marsh garden]

those numbers get a bit silly with it

[bleak hazel]

previously an E6 charm was dumb silver age comic/xianxia bullshit and elders got (highest of essence or 5) as their cap on attributes and abilities

[fierce star]

My biggest issue with ex3 lunars is that they are defined almost entirley by what they are in opposition to (the realm and yu shan) instead of like... what the silver pact believes as a group, which is (we should kill the realm and probably the sidereals). Which is just...

gestures

[marsh garden]

but rather infinitely less so, i'm given to understand

[fierce star]

I liked the thousand river streams project a lot

[bleak hazel]

so Sublime Danger for instance would have Melee 7, Att 7 and a 14 dice excellency

which meant she could casually butcher any player characters that cared to show up with their puny 10-20 dice pools

[fierce star]

so having lunars boiled down to 'we hate the realm and sidereals' as their defining intimacy, as it were

still grateson me

... sorry I started talking about my lunar opinions again

i'll stop, no one wants to hear this stupid spiel yet again

[bleak hazel]

I had a big debate the other day about powerscaling elders and I still think Anys beats S.D. like 55:45, if both go all out

but in 2e it would be "who cares, they're both functionally invulnerable to people who aren't 1000 years old"

the 2e example was usually Chejop, because he was Essence 10 and had a 19 dice base pool for fighting before excellencies

[marsh garden]

i mean i literally just bitched about infernals, it would be hypocritical to say you shouldn't also be allowed to bitch a bit

[prisma sun]

Does SD have defined animal shapes?

[bleak hazel]

once everyone was Infinite Ability Masteried up your odds of hitting him were sub-1%

[bleak hazel]

she has Yes shapes, as do almost all the elders, but she prefers her spirit shape shrike

[fierce star]

yeah but I bitched a lot awhile ago and my opinions aren't common opinions so I'm sure it annoys the regulars

[marsh garden]

spirit shape is a shrike

[prisma sun]

Well its more

[marsh garden]

otherwise no significant mention

[prisma sun]

Theres a lot of bullshit you can get up to with Yes Animal Shapes

[marsh garden]

she has at least one winged shape

and at least one stolen human face

that's all the write-up deigns to mention

[bleak hazel]

I admit my reasoning is less "via mechanical calculation XYZ, this one wins" and more "SMAs are universally high essence solar tier combat suites. Once you have Yes experience, SMAs and in SDs case evocations are going to be most of their bullshit margin, and as Danger's daiklaves are a whole bunch of random magical materials most of her evos won't be Resonant or high essence."

attempting to compare their actual sheets via extrapolating what they "should" have is just an endless game of if-then because both have a bunch of powers that have no mechanics and can just counter each other endlessly

[marsh garden]

well, by mechanics she should also win because she has at least sid brawl + sid melee + MAs + SMAs

vs the aforementioned A Bunch Of Nonresonant Evocations

and she doesn't fight in dog shape because dogs aren't allowed to TB

so she doesn't soakbeast anyway

which is another instance of narrative weight

lunar elders just aren't as narratively important or impactful as sid elders, by virtue of not having anything on the solaroid/SMA tier of narrative fuck you

[bleak hazel]

so my powerscaling of Exalted single combatants is basically:
1: Ligier and other pure combat 3CDs
2: Anys Syn and Rakan
3: Sublime Danger
4: the other Elders and E4-5 combat exalts in a very complicated and fiddly order

5: people who the upper three tiers can easily beat without it being an actual fight, absent PC Hax

[marsh garden]

i think i would not rank other combat 3CDs above the 2-3 slot

[wise ocean]

I'm surprised it'd be that close for you, Misc

Sliding Scale of Graves Investment is E3 to give SD a serious run for her money and Anys is like well, I guess if you also give him a SMA arc

at E5

[bleak hazel]

Danger has Yes artifacts and as such Yes passive effects

[marsh garden]

ligier is supposed to be The King High Motherfucker

[bleak hazel]

and Lunars, if not quite as specialised into 1v1 high essence beatface as Sids, are still on the same tier as Sids

[marsh garden]

i would say that SD should be able to 1v1 (if not decisively, consistently) most combat 3CDs

to say nothing of thulio

and then ligier's on the top

(and like, the bishop somewhere in that 1-3 range)

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah there's the complication of the deathlords

I'd say Bishop is probably 1.5 on my scale but he doesn't have stats yet, as well as Prep Time Heron

with other deathlords being between 2 and 4

[marsh garden]

i think heron should just never get a statline

because her statline either wouldn't do her justice

[wise ocean]

deathlords can't really be figured in because they just keep casually dropping huge environmental hazards and statblocks as written for the other guys are a big ??? on the Can You Live The Lover Arena Hazard

[marsh garden]

or would read "has solar stealth bullshit"

and as such would suck shit to play against because she'd be Kill 1d3 Exalts before the rest beat her with hammers

because her whole gimmick is being a horrible skrunklo creature assassin with her stalking powers

[wise ocean]

like, if you have a giga solar sorcerer in your Circle then you know you need to add "don't die immediately to 30 diff 5-9 environmental hazards" but bashing statblocks against statblocks doesn't account for that

[marsh garden]

in any case, The Deathlords Collectively™ are big enough spookums to have successfully walked into hell and talked to the yozis without getting smacked down by every demon at the same time

which i imagine has to have been in question

since they're all early-era Exalts

[bleak hazel]

demons don't really work like that

the deathlords are all post-Usurpation and at that point Malfeas has been there for 5k years already

so if you want to walk into hell and go chat to Ebby, 99% of hell does not give a fuck, if they even know at all

your funeral, sucker

[marsh garden]

ah true, i always forget how long the first age was

i keep thinking centuries, not millennia

[marsh garden]

hmmm. what's everyone's favorite exigent?

[wise ocean]

janest

[marsh garden]

you know what, fair enough

i like that her scythe is an anima power

[bleak hazel]

Foxbinder

[marsh garden]

i still don't have Miracles

i've heard nothing but good things about it though

and everyone seems to love foxbinder and god-admirals

what's your favorite part of binder?

[buoyant summit]

What the fuck Alchemicals have the Titanfall grapple????

[marsh garden]

oh, they do?

LOL

okay that's pretty great

[bleak hazel]

but in all seriousness, it's probably all the wink-wink-nudge-nudge fluff

foxes are cute and the charms are all good, but what makes them great is stuff like "Shifune says he used to be big enough to reach to Heaven" and then the charm is "make Shifune a little bit bigger, like pony-sized"

[marsh garden]

lmao

[buoyant summit]

Architects as a class of exigent intrigue us

[marsh garden]

architects seem real neat too

[buoyant summit]

🐰I made one for Chanta in the Halta game I run for Misc and Briar and Baihe

[marsh garden]

👀

[bleak hazel]

also foxbinder gets shadow clone technique at like, E2

[marsh garden]

nice, what's their gimmick?

[buoyant summit]

She's a Linowan which makes it funnier

[bleak hazel]

genuinely really neat charm

[marsh garden]

binder's terrestrial, yeah?

[bleak hazel]

yeah

bye fuckers

[marsh garden]

snrk

[buoyant summit]

Her gimmick is that she and the city father of Chanta are working together out of necessity but have developed a begrudging father-child dynamic

[marsh garden]

👀

i love the idea of architect/other god/exalt internal conflict

like an architect/creation city-alch

[bleak hazel]

the first thing that happened when she met the Sids was her and Rival talking shit to each other for about five minutes before the adults got back with the actual mission

[buoyant summit]

God

[bleak hazel]

she continues to be perplexed at the idea of paperwork

[marsh garden]

or architect of a city that already had a deeb or lunar ruler

[buoyant summit]

I know this is not at all how it works, but imagine a fucking Architect of like

Lux

Horrifying

[marsh garden]

it would be really neat!

[bleak hazel]

8m 1wp artifact weapon, but you get resonance and Shifune combat attacks

also "this is my sword, it's made of fox"

this one is probably the single funniest one

[marsh garden]

I'VE SEEN THIS ONE

[buoyant summit]

She's a hunter-gatherer and clan warrior in a society that I don't think has anything that would use paperwork, of course the idea of tediously recording everything on a piece of paper, and certifying on another piece of paper that you recorded everything on that first piece correctly seems stupid to her

[marsh garden]

IT'S REALLY FUNNY

[buoyant summit]

Cuz

It's kinda stupid, lmao

[bleak hazel]

it's such a shame the baby sids don't have prayer strip charms yet

[buoyant summit]

l m a o

[bleak hazel]

we could prove the superiority of bureaucracy with things like Paperwork Technique: free daiklave

[buoyant summit]

l m a o

[marsh garden]

this book says it's a sword

"that doesn't sound right"

well which one of us can read, motherfucker?

[buoyant summit]

She actually can't read

[bleak hazel]

this one is actually insanely good by the way

[buoyant summit]

Legitimately she can't read

[bleak hazel]

Dr Who psychic paper

[marsh garden]

samesies

[bleak hazel]

fox edition

[marsh garden]

my dusk also can't read

and has no old realm

[buoyant summit]

Oh lol

[marsh garden]

despite being a wizard

[buoyant summit]

I was about to be like then how tf are we talking, Topple

stfu

[marsh garden]

lmfao

[buoyant summit]

XD

[bleak hazel]

Tamako has a bunch of really solid charms for terrestrial level at the cost of them being at least a bit dependent on the fucking gremlin not running around ruining everything

[marsh garden]

i'm astrally projecting the words into your mind and you're just hallucinating me being on discord

[bleak hazel]

"hahahaha fuck you dragonbloods"

[fierce star]

Sovereigns, 100%. They've actually surplanted lunars as my favorite type of exalt.

[marsh garden]

sovs do seem super fun too

[bleak hazel]

"not only am I neutral MA, my fox can use kung fu too"

[marsh garden]

i love their anima powers

or, er

their [anima powers] are fine

i love their anima charms, i mean lol

[fierce star]

Trasncendent Anima is fun. Adamant is a great magical material. Their whole backstory is :chefskiss:. Aurora is a beautiful historical tragedy.

They get to summon a gundam made of their soul.

What's not to like?

[marsh garden]

i love aurora

i want the HEs to be canon although i get why they ain't

[bleak hazel]

the foxbinder also has some of the better exigents art as well as the worst

[marsh garden]

i also really want the other apocs to be canon

god

so that's where excord's shifune emote comes from

[fierce star]

look at that face

that is the face of a criminal

[marsh garden]

he's so fucking smug

[prisma sun]

I enjoy the Exalt of Slaughter

[marsh garden]

that's another miracles one, yeah?

exigent of a Bloody Hand or smth?

[fierce star]

miracles added a sovereign charm that lets you turn people into fireglass statues as an AOE attack

yeah, siaka's chosen

[bleak hazel]

foxbinder also has possibly the most permissive excellency of all terrestrial exigents

[fierce star]

also? This charm? this here?

[fierce star]

the name of it is 'Last And Highest Honor' and that is so fucking impactful

[bleak hazel]

E5 fox gaming: Lunar excellency whenever at bonfire, neutral MA, cool familiar with big dice pools

[marsh garden]

ohh, siaka

[marsh garden]

wait what the fuck, that's her Excellency? damn

that's really interesting

really neat that it's a flat 5m power

oh wait

no that's not Excellency is it?

that seems like way too low of a dice cap

[bleak hazel]

the second image is her excellency, the first is the power that triggers its enhanced mode

[marsh garden]

ahh, ic

I'm on mobile so i thought those were both from ID

and was gonna read them after lmao

[marsh garden]

oh yeah that's a juicy as hell name

[marsh garden]

huh, she gets to hit +10?

ig a bunch of exigents do

poor deebs

[fierce star]

I also love the 'anima + 4' excellency cap,. Yeah, it's caps at 8, not 10, but

it doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it such that everyone out ot the horizon knows you'e doing it

[bleak hazel]

quite a few exigents can hit +10

[marsh garden]

sovs gotta fight with their whole ass

[bleak hazel]

deebs are slightly sad and get by on a) better starting positions for MA, b) immaculate martial arts and c) resonant evos

[marsh garden]

which is fitting

and also their excellencies get ribbons, which is some small consolation

...well

some of those benefits ain't ribbons lmao

[fierce star]

I know a lot of peopeldon't like the anima juggling for sovs but it really sells them mechanically for me

[marsh garden]

i think it's super compelling

what's their resonance like? is it neutral adamant diss other without that one charm?

or resonant and the upgrade evos charm does smth else

because i remember they have a charm to juice evos

[fierce star]

Neutral adamant, diss other, can take a charm to get adamant resonance

[marsh garden]

gotcha

hm, can't check rn

i wonder if Nyraxes in abyssals is decent even dissonant

[fierce star]

the 'become resonant' charm also has a 'white XP to evos' ribbon

[velvet raft]

Wait, is dim anima 1? I thought it was 0

[marsh garden]

dim's 0 yh

[fierce star]

dim is 0 but transcendent is 4

[velvet raft]

Oh gotcha

They get an extra level

[bleak hazel]

glowing, burning, bonfire, transcendent is 1-4

[marsh garden]

yeah, they can buy transcendent at e3

[velvet raft]

That is kinda cool

[bleak hazel]

more exalts should do stuff that sets the entire sky on fire

[marsh garden]

it's slick as hell

love it

[velvet raft]

As a dice cap

[marsh garden]

what's your favorite exigent gk?

[bleak hazel]

sid greater signs, abyssal and infernal sun replacement and sovereign transcendent anima are universally very cool

[velvet raft]

TBH I haven't really looked at any of them in enough detail to answer that question

[marsh garden]

we've got foxe from misc, sovs from ID, siaka from voy

fair

y'all got an opinion, rhi?

[fierce star]

like, I also legitimatley think Sovs have enough juice that I wouldnt' feel too left behind playing one in a celestial-tier campaign

[marsh garden]

wait who said janest again

ash?

[wise ocean]

yep

[marsh garden]

cool cool

[velvet raft]

I should develop an opinion given I have the Exigents sequel book