Exalted

[velvet raft]

True

Hm, is the best-represented heavy weapon in martial arts just the scythe?

[tulip folio]

The issue there is 'oh god, martial arts costs so many god damn dots if you're not a sid or an alch'. XD

[velvet raft]

Fortunately as a lunar your investment is extremely high value

Hungry ghost lunar seems rad, really

[tulip folio]

And infernals did just add a Second Hatchet Martial Art.

In Devil-Prince

[velvet raft]

Although it does not mesh amazingly

But then half the thing with lunars or alchs is that you just kinda don’t need more martial arts

[tulip folio]

Not amazingly but it does give a 'If you wanna pick up a second one later, it's there'

[velvet raft]

Since you can mix it with your native charms

[tulip folio]

The main plan is mostly 'Go Deadly Beastman, Rip and Tear'

[velvet raft]

Ye

[limpid badge]

tbf every game im in has killed the MA merit

[velvet raft]

That fits hungry ghost

[limpid badge]

just lain it upon the altar for slaughter

[velvet raft]

Mortalgame kept it but we’re also using crucible rules so merits are extremely gettable

[tulip folio]

The game is also In The North so Bear Lunar is plenty in-place.

[velvet raft]

Yosssss

I think I would like to play a brawl Sid at some point

Sid brawl has a lot of neat tricks

[tulip folio]

What do you think of Moonreaver (Lunars)?

Vaguely Pondering 'Moonreaver but a Hatchet'

[velvet raft]

The artifact? It rocks

Both in terms of vibes and in terms of wrecking shop

Seems very fitting for Hungry Ghost Lunar

My PAOC stylist green sunderdome entrant stole a bunch of moon reaver evocations because they’re fantastic

[tulip folio]

Cool. Then yeah I'll likely set up 'Moonreaver but as some hatchets'.

[wise ocean]

god I wish that was me
I could get a Greater Manse for Graves with that charop money...

[velvet raft]

Even the artifact’s default lore seems extremely friendly to it

[wise ocean]

I think he deserves a house he never goes to or uses as a house

meditation site (weird)

[velvet raft]

Is Graves just evil Red Evening Sky

(Joking)

[wise ocean]

he does kind of invert part of her whole deal by having the complete absence of all desire in favor of the pure self-possession and confidence of action, so I suppose he could be

[velvet raft]

She also has a big house that she basically only sleeps in

Its only contents are a futon and an icebox

[wise ocean]

I recall! RES's Male Living Space

[bleak hazel]

Rival is more short on charms than merits because he keeps failing to fit sorcery into his build

all my sids avoid the green trees and then go "I wish I had ISOB/Summon Ghost/etc."

[limpid badge]

i made paloma. paloma has Cerulean Lute to form, and two brawl charms. this makes her punchtastic

[velvet raft]

Surprised you went for Cerulean Lute

[limpid badge]

i mean it seemed to worked very well for her drunken master shenanigans

[velvet raft]

Fair enough! I can see that

[limpid badge]

im not sure why it wouldn't work for bluesid partygirl?

[velvet raft]

I vaguely recall you expressing it seemed too passive but I might have imagined that

[marsh garden]

moonreaver is so fucking cool

ough

i love it so much

[velvet raft]

I like the imagery of integrating moonreaver’s bullshit into PAOC

“Yeah yeah the shadow moon we’ve all seen it”

[marsh garden]

a shadow moon!

it's just one of however many astral bodies that the Primordials only half-made

[prisma sun]

I am so excited for Golden Barque after what Borb said

I want Drifts to throw someone so far they Team Rocket outta the scene

[bleak hazel]

I have yet to make anyone who can get big value out of FMMF

[prisma sun]

FMMF?

[bleak hazel]

maybe my bluesid will load some evos up along with his unarmed fight suite but that seems unlikely because Mantis Form is right there and is very solid

[wise ocean]

five magical materials form

[bleak hazel]

Four Magical Materials Form

[prisma sun]

Ah gotcha

[bleak hazel]

artifact fists + use evos you've learned without the artifact

[wise ocean]

well, five if you throw in soulsteel post-abyssals, anyway

[bleak hazel]

which allows you to get in a warstrider, learn all the gundam tricks and then deploy them at human scale

[prisma sun]

Wait what book is this in

[bleak hazel]

which includes Vaidurya's world-cutting slash

important for sukuna build

[marsh garden]

it's from PAOC

in sids

[prisma sun]

oooooooo

[prisma sun]

Why doesn't it have the same name as the style

[velvet raft]

I think the biggest FMMF value might still be 2m Five Jade Fury

[bleak hazel]

because PAOC is the whoops all form charms SMA with four different subtrees

each of which has a Form

and then the capstone is "do all the forms"

[marsh garden]

but yeah it's four magical materials because adamant is extremely niche and uninvented and soulsteel is ontologically evil

[bleak hazel]

most of the PAOC forms are good but FMMF is probably the most straightforward

makes a bunch of good basic combat charms cheaper, makes you punch harder

unload those five jade furies into peoples' faces

[marsh garden]

an abyssal master or a juiced sov/adamant alch could help make it Six Magical Materials Form

which means that the sov/alch should be able to learn FMMF

[prisma sun]

The Soviet Alch

[velvet raft]

That’s most alchs

[tulip folio]

Also: Working on the Raksha Nobles, starting with the Scribe. She's Very Competent and Subtly Controlling but plays the role of a servant.

[bleak hazel]

get outta here attribute exalts, you already have the best MA fundamentals, put the SMA scrolls down

[wise ocean]

speaking of paoc, what do you lose out in it by using your maiden enlightened weapon instead of punching people

[tulip folio]

In the alch game I'm in the GM went 'yeah, you can learn SMA but not combo it with other charms' but notably - The one that was given access-wise was Citrine Poxes for an Alch Doctor, not a dedicated martial artst.

So she's more learning it for 'doing medicine things'

Than 'doing combat things'

[prisma sun]

Nothing, I'm pretty sure

[tulip folio]

The Scribe isn't really the Most Fighty Raksha but they're still a raksha noble so they're Pretty Solid in a brawl.

Combat
Attack(Letter Opener): 14 dice (Damage 12L, minimum 3); Tags: Thrown(Short), Piercing
Attack(Unarmed): 14 dice (Damage 12B, minimum 3); Tags: Smashing
Attack(Grapple): 10 dice (10 dice to control)
Combat Movement: 8 dice
Defense: Evasion 5, Parry 6
Soak/Hardness: 10/4

[bleak hazel]

well, you don't get much from Four Magical Materials Form or Demesne and Manse Form's damage boost since they specifically boost your fists

[prisma sun]

Wait hold on

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

Can you not normally do decisive attacks unarmed???

[bleak hazel]

but all the rest of PAOC works fine with weapons

no you can, that should probably read "lethal" or something

[tulip folio]

Yeah, lethal makes sense

[prisma sun]

RAW this weirdly lets you

Roll a withering attack then immediately follow up with a decisive unarmed attack?

Obviously not the intent

but that's the Code Of The Charm

[bleak hazel]

there are a couple of slight typos in the SMAs - that, Orichalcum Sheathing Stance's second paragraph not doing anything because it says damage roll's 10s rather than attack roll's 10s and Vanished Within The Glass's enlightenment effect waiving a WP cost that doesn't exist

I believe the last one is because the wp cost was swapped for a 3i cost in the last patch so just change it to that

[marsh garden]

a lot of SMA charms are basically just "presses the kill you instantly button and kills you instantly", so i assume it is part of the intent

[bleak hazel]

no, it definitely does not do that

punch harder technique is Five Jade Fury, that's the next one

Deadly Starmetal Offensive is an odd one for Sids but has some utility if you have tons of spare motes and want to save willpower

[wise ocean]

damn, just realized that. actually does make crystal's e5 form meaningfully worse since I specifically set him up with hearthstones to combo D&M damage bonus on the spear

pain

[prisma sun]

It feels good for Sids I feel like

considering they have the best excellency in the game

It's just Half Off Your Attack Excellencies

[bleak hazel]

if you can dance in and out of FMMF then you get to love it because it costs 3m

at 5m with some mote efficiency charms you are outright trading motes for WP (at a good rate, it's by no means bad)

Rival can loop it if he has to but it's a bit expensive

and for Solaroids obviously it's a clean half off, very handy

it's not the most interesting charm in PAOC but not everything can be Five Jade Fury

[velvet raft]

The really funny thing is that FJF just kinda does most of what DSO does but cheaper and better

[bleak hazel]

"Black Jade, Blue Jade, White Jade, get on the fucking floor" yeah

[prisma sun]

Does it?

You can't add 10+ dice with FJF

[marsh garden]

it's better on a sid because you have free TN reduction anyway

so you're getting 5 dice to the attack roll for 3m instead of 4m

the big kicker is losing the e3 TN4 for wp

[prisma sun]

Yeah like a full excellency on a Sid for 5 motes is
10 dice and -3 target number

[bleak hazel]

3-5 dice depending on essence

[marsh garden]

full excellency for sid is five dice

not ten dice

it's still flatly the best excellency in the game

[prisma sun]

Oh

[marsh garden]

but it's not a solaroid excellency and TN reduction

[bleak hazel]

yeah, they have basically no dice trick charms because their excellency is the GOAT

[marsh garden]

eh

they do have dice trick charms

it's just in making their TN reduction free

[bleak hazel]

for crafting, yeah, not really for anything else

just efficiency

[marsh garden]

most dice tricks aren't "add non-charm dice"

[bleak hazel]

they effectively are

[marsh garden]

just "add 5 dice for 3m instead of 5m"

[bleak hazel]

the point of having double 9s for 3-4m on most splats is because that effectively breaks your dice cap

mote efficiency is an entirely different thing

[marsh garden]

doubles and rerolls do show up in some artifacts, so it's not like they're banned out

[bleak hazel]

a couple of MAs too, yeah

but in their native charmset Sids mostly just get what their excellency gives cheaper, which is a notable design restriction because if you gave them doubles and rerolls and non-charm dice easily they'd be absurdly busted

[marsh garden]

a lot rarer in MAs outside of damage rolls tho

[bleak hazel]

yeah, for that reason

capbreakers (so noncharm anything, double X, reroll Y, anything of that sort) that can be applied to any splat's base kit need to be watched pretty closely lest they combine with some existing stuff to produce nonsense

[tulip folio]

Vague thing on mind: I know they were powergaming nonsense but I do kinda miss 2e's negative mutations for charms that give other people mutations. They were fun for cursing people with.

[wise ocean]

hm. what's the easiest way to hit 3 of 4 here

"land rejoice, fighting a fighting guy to auto-fulfill #2" is two, but the others seem rough to get

[marsh garden]

in sid or abyssal?

[wise ocean]

abyssal, ideally, but either works

[tulip folio]

'I LOVE KILLING' is a positive outlook on death

[bleak hazel]

"do an inspire" probably

[marsh garden]

abyssal has the standard solaroid presence reflexive influence

[wise ocean]

can you WP resist inspires?

[marsh garden]

yeah

but you're throwing out sepulchur moves

which also eat giant chunks of wp

like i think three separate charms in there demand 2-3 wp to resist

[wise ocean]

sepulcher moves are kind of cheeks for your motepool though

and they don't do damage up until This Charm

[marsh garden]

yeah it's one of the least efficient smas

[bleak hazel]

in a duel, anyway

[marsh garden]

No Greater Terror is a big one

[bleak hazel]

everything is giga AOE so it scales well with no. of enemies

[marsh garden]

one of the things threaten can do is act as an inspire roll for fear or despair

at least according to core

[wise ocean]

... huh. neat.

yeah, I suppose abyssal presence to drop the reflexive threaten inspire despair is the most efficient way to nab third condition

[tulip folio]

It's a boss fight sma, if you're the boss

[chilly sluice]

Sepulcher definitely starts up your boss music when you pop the aura

[marsh garden]

if it isn't a "walk up and go into final fantasy battle mode" encounter, you can also leverage some spells as part of your run-up

[wise ocean]

revisiting this old combo

everything else is really quite doable but the hard part is the three conditions

ah, forgot to also add White Reaper form doubling 10s on the decisive damage roll even not vs. battlegroups. 27 HLs average

[marsh garden]

oh right!

there's also this one for social scenes

[wise ocean]

oh that's nice

yet more big mote costs, though

[marsh garden]

yeah

an infernal you aren't

no casual 30 mote discounts here

[spiral cosmos]

pretty much. you can think of it as the four in the form are fundaments of creation in a way adamant and soulsteel aren't or weren't thought of as being

[marsh garden]

a five-dot artifact that steals temple-self and its e2 upgrade as its e4-e5 capstone would be pretty strong

probably couldn't do it below that

[wise ocean]

rejoice! costs 10m and the combo itself is 25m, so you have, what

~40 motes left over for everything else you're doing in the leadup

less 15 for albicant sepulcher form (to use rejoice! reflexively as a counterattack, and then roll the mote costs over into WR form for double 10s to get +4 HLs of damage)

minus 10m
which is your full solaroid join battle excellency

so you have 15 motes for everything else you possibly want to do in the scene other than just absolutely shithousing someone

[bleak hazel]

I suspect E1 ability 1 temple-self letting you shotgun your big cult to add half again to your mote pool and negate the costs of scenelongs/indefinites might not stick around, that feels like a 1/scene kind of situation and using it on something like Ways of Exaltation to make it outright free seems a bit much regardless.

[marsh garden]

how much wp is all that?

like...three?

[wise ocean]

yep

2wp for the big combo, 1wp Rejoice!, maybe wp your join battle too because why not

[marsh garden]

lmao

and that 15m budget also isn't counting any silk armor you might have

[wise ocean]

oh, it is

[marsh garden]

oh aight

[wise ocean]

I think it is, anyway

[marsh garden]

ahh

wait, 11?

what's your third artifact/charm committed?

[wise ocean]

sword and scythe with the armor, discounted with barrow panoply

[marsh garden]

5m for scythe, 4m for light armor, 2m for ?

[wise ocean]

thus the ~approximate

[marsh garden]

ah, sword

[wise ocean]

elegant tyrant majesty is 5m scene-long (and there's no reason not to do it if you plan to excellency your inspire at all), 2m (3m - 1m discount from etm) succinct killer discourse for the reflexive social, 2m (3 - 1) voice of bleak truths to reduce resolve boosting with intimacies, 3m (4-1) 1wp to pop this very funny little thing

12m 1wp

if you don't have an extra artifact attuned like graves does you have just enough motes left in the pool to be able to use a perfect dodge

[marsh garden]

lol

i think this is the point where you need to attune A Glorious Solar jewel of hero's panoply

[wise ocean]

delicious motes

crimson banquet hunger also helps get motes back if you combo it with Rejoice! since that's a decisive you have to land before The Big One anyway

[marsh garden]

thaaat's

the melee mote steal right?

[wise ocean]

yep, 2i for 5m (effectively)

[marsh garden]

gotcha

i only remember blood-drinking palm and hungry missile technique consistently

unforchies thrown is way less consistent

[wise ocean]

god willing ckf will give me even more things to spend motes on. I will not rest until this combo can one-shot a full resistance lunar

[velvet raft]

I may only have two more sessions of mortalgame :(

[marsh garden]

ough

job got back to you?

sorry to hear

well.

glad that you're getting a new job, sorry that it kills your schedule

[velvet raft]

It might

I'm not actually going to know until I get assigned to a location

Which is really annoying

Backing out of this game is gonna suck so bad D:

As you finally take to the road, you think ahead about some of the dangers you might encounter…

Sinking Crabs: These dog-sized desert crabs have a technique by which they burrow under the sand and emit air at a rapid frequency from their shells, causing the sand to become liquified. If any prey steps onto the liquified area, they will sink right in, where the Sinking Crab can sieze and devour them. You can recognize the danger by little ripples moving across the surface of sand.

Mocking Wren: These tiny birds are very cute and capable of lovely birdsong, but they are shockingly vicious. Most of the desert tribes have a policy of killing them on sight. What they do is use their nimble voices to mimic a sound that will attract some unsuspecting animal (or human!) further and further away from water and safety. When the person becomes hopelessly lost and too weak to go on any further, they swoop in and eat the eyes as a delicacy, before fluttering off.

Rock Snakes: These large, anaconda-size snakes like to sun themselves on rocks, and their knobbly skin is camouflaged to make them look just like rock outcroppings to the unwary. They don’t hunt humans, but neither do they like being disturbed, and more than one person has been crushed in a Rock Snake’s powerful coils after sitting down on the wrong rock.

Desert Scorpions: These tiny black scorpions have a terrible poison. Mostly its not an issue, because their little barbed tails can’t pierce boots, but they have a tendency to crawl into small, sheltered spaces to pass the night, and boots are perfect for this! Better shake out your boots each morning, or you’re courting death. They can also hide inside handbags, purses, or cooking equipment. Just be careful and watch where you stick your hands! Their poison is probably not lethal to a full-grown adult. Probably.

[prisma sun]

https://i.imgur.com/mcbx2yi.png

Who here is the most afraid of?

[velvet raft]

Me

I am the most afraid of

[wise ocean]

who here is the

[velvet raft]

Also me

I am the

[coral wraith]

You gotta get on the green train we got hella good charms

[bleak hazel]

but the blue train

the blue train has the things I like

[velvet raft]

PURPLE

And yellow

And red

I like sids

[wise ocean]

it's a shame that we have orange as the pnet curator color instead of yellow

otherwise this channel would be color-coded by sid caste

[coral wraith]

you will take your research assistants and you will like them, boy

[wise ocean]

ah, yellow is the GM color. curators need to be green

please submit this change to the mods immediately

[velvet raft]

Fuck, my mortal just had another ominous dream D:

This is tragic

[bleak hazel]

I do not need research assistants

I want socialize orbital laser beams and violence

the 21st Purplesid, a 50/50 mix of serenities and battles charms

[coral wraith]

everyone needs research assistants

[velvet raft]

I prefer google spiders

[bleak hazel]

yeah you have to offer me a lot before I start committing lots of indefinite motes

I need those motes to kill people with

[coral wraith]

look all im saying is, having a little guy in the infinite archive or other heavenly trove of knowledge is worth its weight in gold

[velvet raft]

Like, was that Abyssal foreshadowing? Is my character gonna be Abyssalified? Aaaaaaaaaaaaa

[marsh garden]

lmao

okay i entirely forgot about deeb signature charms

or at least

the athletics fire sig

and did an evocation with 99% similarity

so that's going in the trash and now i'm paralyzed, because i just have names, vibes, and an aesthetic that's already been eaten

[velvet raft]

So, a cat showed up on our sand skiff, and we had to roll difficulty 7 wits + integrity checks

So, you know, it's a lunar

[marsh garden]

you should pet the cat

look them in the eye, go "I know what you are." and then pat them anyway

[velvet raft]

Only my character noticed that the cat was new, but was pretty easily persuaded by the rest of the party

[marsh garden]

ah incredible

every ship needs a ship's cat

it's good luck!

[velvet raft]

Indeed!

The cat has been named "ship's cat"

[marsh garden]

excellent

i need to get a dog

i have a "friend" that uses a pair of nightmares as familiars

one's a bare-skulled raiton with mouths across its body that's constantly half-melting into oil

it's called We Were Born to Rot

the other one's a fractal ball of crying children named Everything Ends and Everyone Leaves

i asked her to teach me how to make them

hopefully i don't get thrown into the labyrinth again

[fierce star]

But you could have both

[velvet raft]

But I could also have more martial arts charms :D

[velvet raft]

Good session of mortalgame

Really hoping I don't have to leave it

Managed to save the life of an NPC we adopted

[fierce star]

Hmm. Can I get eyes on a martial arts form?

[bleak hazel]

sure

[fierce star]

Steam-And-Shine Refulgence Form
Cost: 8m. Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: Form
Duration: Scene-Long
Prerequisite Charms: Jekibi’s Plowing Charge, Blast and Cleanse
Steam-And-Shine Refulgence style is based on the purity of steam, the glint of freshly shined metal and the brightness of a world without filth. By adapting this form, the practitioner rids himself of elemental impurities and becomes closer to the ideal.


Steam-And-Shine Refulgence Form provides the following benefits:
The practitioner negates the mobility penalty of medium and heavy armor to his Evasion.
While wielding a weapon with the Flame or Steam tags, their range increases by one range band.
The practitioner’s melee attacks gain +1 overwhelming, or +2 if they are against a creature of darkness, an enemy of fate, a fae, or a gremlin.
The practitioner may ignore the Slow tag on weapons with the Flame or Steam tags.

Posted it the other day and didn't get much feedback.

(consider Steam to be the exact same as flame for most purposes)

oh, it needs the uh

reflexive entry

I kept looking at it going 'something is missing, soemthing is missing, what the fuck is missing' lmao

[tulip folio]

I feel like it's slightly fighting itself.

With it boosting melee but not range and range but not melee

Also: Fae are enemies of fate 😛

[fierce star]

and gremlins are technically both, I guess I can save wordcount by cutting them both out

and the MA it's for is meant to be mixed-ranged

[tulip folio]

Yeah, I just am not 100% on it's value being fantastic for that mix. As removing slow means 'just keep shooting' is more of a thing but it's got a melee boost...the concept seems fine, I just think it might need a bit more Oomph to it.

[fierce star]

nods

[fierce star]

Hmm, what could be a good thing to add...

[marsh garden]

what are the style weapons?

does it use flame pieces and bayonets, or flame pieces and something else entirely?

more to the point, what's making it a gun-and-melee style?

[fierce star]

Staves, steam and flame weapons, alchemical grenades (iki statted those up, they're another sort of thrown weapon), and shields, as well as heavy armor.

[marsh garden]

i think you should tie those together

that's kind of an incoherent grouping imo

how do you do the same moves with a staff as you do with a shield as you do with a firewand?

that's what i want to see this form square

what are you shooting, shield bashing, and staff-fighting?

oh and nading

[fierce star]

So this is a martial art specifically developed by a group of specially equipped autochthonian militia in the city-state the campaign i'm going to be joining is set in, who are equipped with basically high pressure steam guns to clean off gunk and mud and muck since teh city is in a state of permanent ashen rain due to the ducts above them.

basically, if you've ever played power wash sim, it's taht but you're also beating up gremlins

[marsh garden]

right sure

it's not the aesthetic

it's the mechanical side

hungry ghost uses hatchets, kamas, and tiger claws, all paired

it's three distinct weapons that are all pairs of short, choppy blenders

centipede uses a ton of weapons, both longer bladed equipment and boots

but Motion of Myriad Legs is a big melee hit with all of your rapid smacky multi-hit things

how does Steam-And-Shine Refulgence Strike, or whatever you call it, look like as a bespoke Technique that works with a grenade and a staff and a gun and a shield?

that's what i want to see the form unite

two entirely different types of ranged weapon that can't be used in even remotely compatible ways + two entirely different types of melee weapon that can be used in kind of compatible ways, but not compatible with the ranged weapons — so how are they all being used in the same way?

and if the answer is "they aren't" and they have bespoke Charms for each weapon, i think the form should play into that

[fierce star]

Hmm.

I had an idea for an earlier charm in the style to let you use flame pieces or steam wands as if they were staves (or wrackstaves if they are an artifact verison)

[marsh garden]

that makes sense! gun -> staff is the same vibe as wood dragon going bow -> staff

and it unites two of those

so it becomes a melee style and not really a gun style, meaning you have something to emphasize there, and then you want to tackle "where do grenades come in?"

does any of that help?

[spiral cosmos]

if i may offer a suggestion? for reflexive reload tech, usually that's turned into an entry-level charm that has some hook into everything else. splat charms all have it. righteous devil has it as a thing you can do alongside aiming. you might consider something like that where there's some little benefit alongside it

[fierce star]

I'm also considering for the form, throwing in 'you may reflexivly ready weapons; if you ready a thrown weapon this way, increase it's range band by one if you were already equipped with a melee weapon', with the mental image of tossing a grenade up and smacking it with your firewand. or shooting it, whatever, ti's a stunt, go wild

[spiral cosmos]

one thing I will say is that being able to attack another range band out is extremely powerful as an ongoing effect and is probably the kind of thing you'd see at essence 2

[limpid badge]

a reflexive reload/retrieve/rearm tech seems right for Power Wash CQC

[fierce star]

My general thought there is that increasing it from Short to Medium is probably okay for scene long, but that's fair

[limpid badge]

like they've always got something at hand on their rigging to fuck you up with

[fierce star]

Hmm. Reflexive reload on doing a melee attack.

[limpid badge]

yeah!! something cute im sure you can get it~!!

im thinking about writing an infernal ceremonial armor/princess dress for viridian legend exoskeleton

Regalia of the Drooling Demon Princess

[prisma sun]

I had a brain blast

[limpid badge]

i thin it'd be cute to give her access to weird social charms about crocodile tears as armor evocations

lean back into arablissa as a Crybaby Lure

it seems like it might be fun and fill out some space i want her to take but im not really sure infernal social trees'd give her

[prisma sun]

What's the usual limit on multi-attacks

Essence, yeah?

[marsh garden]

e3

[prisma sun]

Oh I mean like

[marsh garden]

oh wait

[prisma sun]

limiting how many you can do

yea

[marsh garden]

it depends

martial arts like to do "1 attack + [x conditions]"

splat multiattacks like to use attributes

centipede is just

e or 3 as its intro charm

[spiral cosmos]

me when people post mechanics for feedback and i have to keep my skeleton from entering Developer Mode

[marsh garden]

which is quite different from the others

LOL

i would love developer mode on my mechanics tbh, i'm extremely inept

[limpid badge]

its okay we are homebrew mostly oldheads we can take a punch probably

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/golden-bat-skeleton-retro-anime-osamutezuka-gif-15266546

[fierce star]

look I'm used to being beaten upside the head with my stupid ideas

I post first passes not becuase I think they're good, but because they need to be fixed

[limpid badge]

iki especially

[prisma sun]

Oh yeah I don't mind being told it sucks

[fierce star]

90% of everything sucks and clawing my way into the 10% is a supreme effort of will and feedback

[spiral cosmos]

i will keep this in mind although it's also, like. work

to give good feedback

[prisma sun]

ofc

[fierce star]

oh yeah no don't like burn yourself out on it of course

[limpid badge]

nah yah, we're tellin you find your comfy zone and just Post

do as you please~! that's the fun innit

[prisma sun]

But yeah, what if it's an artifact?

I would guess Essence right?

Or should I go like Dexterity

Or do something funny

I won't reveal what the funny is

but I could do a funny

[marsh garden]

i thiiiiink artifacts like to do essence?

i can't actually think of any artifacts with multiattacks, but i would be shocked if there weren't any

[spiral cosmos]

maybe something in alchemicals. that's something i think artifacts have generally really avoided

[fierce star]

I love getting a brain blast for symmetry reasons and then going 'wait, no, that's a terrible idea'

[marsh garden]

ah, stormcaller has one

[fierce star]

nevermind different idea blasted me like something that gets balsted a lot

[prisma sun]

God I thought this would be longer

Cost
Mins
Type:
Keywords: 
Duration: Instant
Prerequisites:

The road lies behind you. 
A lifetime of practice. 
All for this moment. 
Make your teachers proud. 
Make your student learn. 

The wielder may make up to (Essence+1 Max 5) Decisive Attacks, splitting their initiative evenly among all the attacks. The user may switch between any martial arts forms for free that they know before performing any attack, though they may only switch to each form once. If the wielder uses any non-excellency martial arts charms or evocations from this artifact to enhance these attacks, they need only pay the cost once. ```

oh wait I cut out the most important bit

[marsh garden]

mmm, i think the free Charms part is probably a bad idea off of splats

i can't think of any in MAs that give it

[prisma sun]

Are you talking about the last bit or the form bit

[marsh garden]

the "...uses any non-Excellency Charms"

[prisma sun]

I'm basing it off Harnessed Firestorm Assault

https://i.imgur.com/nEV2SVE.png

[fierce star]

Steam-And-Shine Refulgence Form
Cost: 8m. Mins: Martial Arts 4, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: Form
Duration: Scene-Long
Prerequisite Charms: Jekibi’s Plowing Charge, Blast and Cleanse
Steam-And-Shine Refulgence style is based on the purity of steam, the glint of freshly shined metal and the brightness of a world without filth. By adapting this form, the practitioner rids himself of elemental impurities and becomes closer to the ideal.


Steam-And-Shine Refulgence Form provides the following benefits:
The Stylist negates the mobility penalty of medium and heavy armor to his Evasion.
The Stylist may reflexively ready a style weapon for Steam-And-Shine Refulgence Form once during your turn.
The Stylist may flurry a melee attack and a defend other action in the same turn with no penalty.
The Stylist may flurry a ranged attack and a take cover action in the same turn with no penalty.

Special Activation Rules: When the Stylist makes a ranged attack against an enemy in Close range, or uses the Rush action against an enemy at Short range or further, they may reflexively enter this form. They may also reflexively enter this form on rolling Join Battle against an enemy that is a creature of darkness or an enemy of fate.

Action Economy????

[marsh garden]

that is a deeb signature charm, and not something splat-agnostic

which is what i'm pointing to

Rat Style's capstone is a multiattack but doesn't give free charms, centipede's intro charm (and capstone, which buffs it) also doesn't give free charms

[prisma sun]

Hrmmmgh

https://i.imgur.com/P896rf2.png

[marsh garden]

oh, potentiality gauntlets?

i was looking at Rat/Centipede vs things like Harnessed Firestorm Assault and Iron Whirlwind Attack

[prisma sun]

Seems to be the main multi-attack artifact that I can find

Well no I'm just saying like

[tulip folio]

Hmm...I wonder how far you can push 'Supports spellcasting' on a first circle equivelent NPC. Not actually a first circle so it can't be summoned but roughly that power level.

[prisma sun]

For an artifact that requires a lot of MA investment, I feel like it's not a bad capstone

[marsh garden]

if there's precedent there's precedent, yeah

[prisma sun]

It even has the Resonant bonus for free there

[marsh garden]

i mean it can be summoned by your splat, yeah?

and it can be bound by sorcerers, they just need to run around and look

[tulip folio]

It can be bound yeah as there's a fae binding spell, just not a summoning one.

[prisma sun]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mYq8A1gGjWFA1lnjX5uuq7MJymj_JAs_cz-F8UqjHRE/edit?usp=sharing

This now means the Five Fingers are drafted

I must now go back and make them suck less and also do math

[limpid badge]

hrmmmnnnn

im thinking about armor evos now. i really am? inflicting intimacies when you soak through someone's attack, cash out intimacies when you fucking Gets Them? that might be cute, fits the soak and grapple problem i wanted to build...

[spiral cosmos]

move over, ratthew. grandmaster martial artist centipeedro is here to show you how it's done

next kung fu panda is gonna be wild

[prisma sun]

I want the vibe to be you hit a motherfucker with a fighting game cutscene ass super

the camera angle changes

[limpid badge]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8T6XQ2BAjs

[tulip folio]

I think what I'll do for support here is 'This creature count as cooperation for sorcerous workings'.

So like, not a True Sorcerer Themselves

But they have Enough Magic to be able to support someone who is

[prisma sun]

EXACTLY but SPECIFICALLY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rAjAHmaAh0

[tulip folio]

I'm right now pondering a fae in the realm of brownies and such. Small little creatures that dwell in houses and help people out with minor magic.

Also because I just got my ass handed to me by a Madolche deck.

[limpid badge]

when you reduce a withering attack to its minimum damage, the attacker gains a minor tie of pity, paternal/maternal disdain, etc as appropriate... @wise ocean thank you for the good words to describe how people should feel about arby crying in the middle of an active combat

[marsh garden]

oh that's great vibes

like black claw but you're actually just like that

[limpid badge]

black claw but she actually is kind of a pathetic monster

[tulip folio]

Vague Pondering on this small fae: It feeds on feelings of gratitude, which is why it likes helping mortals.

It helps, they feel grateful, it goes 'Omm nomm nomm, delicious'

[marsh garden]

got demotivated realizing i had way too much overlap with ideas i had vs deeb charms that already exist, so now i'm thinking about the sorcerous relic i wanted to do and an adamant mirror named God-Botherer

that bothers gods

maybe orichalcum

i assume ori's better for something with themes invoking Divine Authority and being an omnitool?

i still don't have a perfect grasp on the distinction between ori and adamant's themes of perfection/excellence

[tulip folio]

Thaumaturgist: Magizurek are masters of small magics, generally knowing four dots worth of Thaumaturgical rituals, with a preference towards those useful to mortals such as mystical medicines or wardings against other supernatural beings. The assistance of a Magizurek counts as the Cooperation Means for Sorcerous workings that involve the healing, protection or support of the area they inhabit (Such as driving out a plague or erecting a ward to keep the walking dead at bay).

[marsh garden]

could also throw in counting as means if their thaumaturgy overlaps

[tulip folio]

My plans with what they're good at is the thaumaturgy, helping out with household stuff and unlike most fae, can natively see dematerialized things.

To tell gods, ghosts and demons to Get Out Of Their House

[fierce star]

"Excuse me sir. But this is not your domicile. I must ask you to leave." confused blood ape noises

[tulip folio]

...I'm realizing I could give them something like Unweaving Method where they Shoot A Bolt of Wyld Magic at you.

Give it an absolutely garbage damage of like 5

But ignores armoured soak

[fierce star]

oooh

[tulip folio]

This ignores armoured soak, or all soak not provided by magic if targeting a dematerialized being.

'Get out of there!' pinging blood ape with bolts of magic

Blood Ape Materializes and Now Gets Soak
"I have become Error!"

[marsh garden]

It is exceptional equipment (Exalted, p. 580) for music-based Performance rolls, and for influence rolls against characters the wielder earnestly wishes to improve the lives of.

is this too broad as an attunement bonus?

maybe just instill rolls?

[fierce star]

For an attunement bonus? I think it works just fine

well

what's the dot value?

[marsh garden]

four, it's a sorcerous relic

[fierce star]

yeah this is definitely fine then, I think

[marsh garden]

thanks

[tulip folio]

Honestly, I'd be almost tempted to add one more category it's exceptional equipment for.

[marsh garden]

well

"music-based performance rolls" also includes sorcery for this one

so it's pulling double duty

[tulip folio]

The cloak in lunars is exceptional equipment for several things.

Ah, that'll do it.

[fierce star]

yeah

also topple I reworked steam and shine refulgence almost completely after taking your like, thematic mechanical suggestions as a thought, would you like to see what it's got

[marsh garden]

sure!

[limpid badge]

oh starting at e2 gives me some juice to play with here (thinks about how this could be the first charm she trains) ha ha that's scary.

[fierce star]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16Jccukqv0NtM5NWhlko7Q07wzTO1XoGno7AhOx0Yj7s/edit?usp=sharing I also put the rules for alchemical greandes (thank you iki) and the Steam tag in it fo rreference at the start

[marsh garden]

god, i forgot that "sledge" was the name for a two-handed bludgeoning weapon

[fierce star]

it seemed more appropriate for autochthon than tetsubo

[tulip folio]

Charms still in progress but if you come into their house and try to cause trouble they will Stab You With A Fork.

[limpid badge]

anyway with Scar Writ Saga Shield x2 and artifact medium armor is a Lot Of Soak on picking this up means taking the Evocation charms would probably be... like... three of them? i feel like 3 charms is enough for weird social effects that revolve around soaking/stamina parrying?

capstone to "eat" the intimacy as part of a grapple, all her tears and mold catching with green fire, take (Intimacy) ranked effect. maybe some environmental.

[marsh garden]

hmmm

[fierce star]

ooh, I dig eating things that what not should be the eaten

[marsh garden]

can i make a suggestion?

or a couple i guess lmao

[fierce star]

if to me: by all means go ahead, this is still in first pass territory despite being on like, the third pass

[marsh garden]

i think Steam should be a secondary tag for Flame weapons, since it's already got an identical chassis

which lets you cut out [Steam or] Flame on some of the wording, and lets you reiterate less

and also, shields don't super matter in any of the charms listed, except when you make one of your guns a shield

[fierce star]

that's legit

[marsh garden]

so i think there are two tracks to choose from there

maybe you could give one of the steam weapons Shield and like, an encumbrance property, or alternatively just make "your steam weapons get the shield tag without the penalty" part of the Form

since i think that's mostly what you're going for with shields, right? heavy steamguns that have mounted shield plates or something similar?

[fierce star]

Yeah, or like, flame piece/pistol sized steam wand with a shield in the offhand

[marsh garden]

gootcha

[limpid badge]

yeah~! its fun its cute? i like the idea of her tears igniting as an attack and the Innocent Monster reveals that she is still a monster

[fierce star]

really the problem is making shields matter without just going with 'remove teh damage penalty', becuase shields are cool but they also suck, and there's only so much you can do with tying in 'you can flurry full defense'

[marsh garden]

i mean, razor parasols exist now

[fierce star]

still suffer the -2 damage though

[marsh garden]

as "a medium shield weapon that intrinsically removes the damage penalty at no cost"

[fierce star]

wait they do? It hought they still had the -2 damage.

[marsh garden]

oh do they?

[fierce star]

as far as I know they do

[marsh garden]

ah yeah so they do

well, "no damage penalty" can be part of the Form charm if it's intended to be a big part of the aesthetic

although this form does do a lot...

hmm

i think you could swap the evasion thing for that

because this style already wants you to be a Big Tank In Big Armor

[tulip folio]

Vague Pondering:

[marsh garden]

and plays with shields and other melee weapons, which care about parry

[tulip folio]

-Shields provide their defence bonus to evasion as well as parry.

[marsh garden]

since adding evasion to that, while nice for a character that wants to diversify, kind of pulls you in an extra direction that the style-so-far hasn't supported

[fierce star]

legit

[marsh garden]

the melee style weapons part for parry does make sense tho, As Needs Must definitely makes it gel more in my head

i would never pretend to be good at balance, but it feels more right to me

i think the positions of the charms should probably get juggled around a bit, though

[fierce star]

oh yeah positions are definitely up in the air right now, as far as prereqs and essence/ability requirements

this is the general setup i'm going for

[marsh garden]

As Needs Must and Dare To Win seem like they should probably be the bedrock

[fierce star]

but stuff can be juggled around

/menods

[marsh garden]

since they're your defensive compatibility and reload tools, respectively

and borb mentioned that reload tools are always super early in a given tree

and then compatibility tools should probably always be pretty early so you're not rejiggering your build's foundation after some investment

[fierce star]

what do we think of combining some ideas: instead of the mobility penalty negation in the form, make it shields no longer have a damage penalty + their defense bonus applies to evasion as well as parry? Lets you shore up a weakness without having to like, feel liek you need to build for it.

[marsh garden]

hmm, i think you'd have to sell me on other Charms in the style that care about Evasion

i don't think it's unreasonable, since there are a bunch of styles already that do

but "heavy armor and shield" style isn't one that screams dodge

[fierce star]

It mostly cares about negating penalties more than evasion itself, thus Jekibi's Plowing Charge

[marsh garden]

so i'd need other concrete content to point at for it to feel "right" to me

[fierce star]

negating armor penalties I should say

[marsh garden]

ehhh, you can leave some room there for native charms and artifacts

or you could keep going down that road and i'll probably go

and it'll make more sense to me once the style's farther along

[fierce star]

yeah, we'll see how things shape out

[tulip folio]

Eyepluck (5m; Simple; Decisive-Only: Instant; Essence 1) The Magizurek makes a difficulty 3 melee gambit against an enemy. If she succeeds, he’s blinded and suffers a -3 penalty on all actions that rely on vision. Characters with exalted healing are only blinded until the end of the scene.

@fierce star

[fierce star]

go for the eyes!

stick a fork in 'em!

[marsh garden]

wow, this is extremely relevant to something that's just come up

i love it

[tulip folio]

Friendly local household fae that is a very dirty fighter if it's defending its home.

[marsh garden]

now make it eclipse so i can learn it by eating their eyes

[fierce star]

pffft

[tulip folio]

Honestly, it would be a possible eclipse charm but I'll ponder things. XD

[marsh garden]

pfft

okay, i need to find something else to put this with, but

making this starmetal chime relic

and an Evocation power i want to do is there is no such thing as a trivial character

one of its themes is "love the world and everything in it"

[limpid badge]

Summon (Heroic Mortal)

[tulip folio]

Something I could see there is letting characters basicly take on the statline of like an Elite Soldier mortal regardless of what they were otherwise.

Not a physical transformation but a 'You are empowered to be your best'

[bleak hazel]

Discount tiger warrior

tigger warrior

[marsh garden]

hey misc what was the name of that SMA that someone taught the sun?

[marsh garden]

alas, deadge

lessee, unrelated

i think i have the vibe down for the sorcerous relic's initiations

had some mechanics, but they weren't enough of a statement

so now they're all songs for the Incarnae, but i'm kinda torn

should i do one for sol and luna or gaia and luna?

[wise ocean]

gaia is a primordial, isn't she?

[marsh garden]

er, yes

but gaia is specifically important to the character involved

it's a relic made from the bones of a saint

one is going to be Aurora and Nebiru, as an Elegy to All the Light We Cannot See

but i'm torn on the pairings for the other two

i'm probably going to make the others book names too lmao, but

hm, or maybe not, that name's a bit too long

[tulip folio]

Hearthfire Warding (1m, 1wp; Simple; One Day; Stackable; Eclipse; Essence 1) The Magizurek touches a door, window, or other opening and renders it impassable to dematerialized beings. They can’t circumvent this by moving through the wall next to the sealed door; the only way in is to materialize and open the door or to find another entrance. The Magizurek can stack multiple uses of this Charm to ward any number of portals, as long as they are in the same building. If the Magizurek uses this multiple times in the same scene, she waives the willpower cost of all uses past the first.

An eclipse charm for the household spirit fae!

'Piss Off Ghosts, Stay Out'

[marsh garden]

that doesn't really feel e1

no save, no interaction, no real cost, permaban

[tulip folio]

Entertainingly: It's actually an E1 effect on a terrestial exalt.

[marsh garden]

on an exalt, yeah

i'd push it up a bit outside of that

[tulip folio]

Increasing it to E2+ won't really affect the charm in any way other than 'making it harder for exalts to learn'

[marsh garden]

that's the idea, yeah, give this crazy good charm some niche protection on the splat with it

it doesn't feel like the floor for divine heritage

[tulip folio]

I'll admit, I'm not super sure it's crazy good when it's costing willpower to use and only works on closed doors/doesn't work if the guy materializes and just opens the door. I'll ponder things though.

[marsh garden]

it costs 1wp on a glup shitto nobody (or your exalt) to turn off demat in your safehouse

you just get a building with one entrance and now demat is hard banned with no circumvention, which i think is worth e2

just off vibes

only really relevant to solaroids though

[tulip folio]

Dreamborn Feast (5; Simple; One Meal; Eclipse; Essence 1) The Magizurek rolls Domestic Work to bless the food for a meal, stretching it further than those preparing it would have expected. It provides sustainance for a number of additional people equal to her successes. Even the most unappestising of food blessed this way has a hearty, pleasent taste and uneaten food dissolves into gossamer afterwards. There must be at least enough for a single person to originally eat a full meal.

Another very minor charm

Letting them stretch food a bit more

But not create it from nothing

[marsh garden]

inversely: i actually think this should be stronger, like the uhhh

i don't remember if this is thaumaturgy or someone's charm

i think it's a resplendent dream brush charm?

[tulip folio]

It's better than thaumaturgy.

[marsh garden]

that lets you make shit that only works in the wyld

[tulip folio]

The thaumatugy version lets you turn 1 bread into 2 bead. XD

[marsh garden]

i'd say it lets them make food from nothing in the wyld, but it only counts as true sustenance while they're there

on top of the replication

[tulip folio]

Design-wise: This is more in line with the various 'you can scavenge for food for X people' charms that A) Exist B) Nobody ever fucking takes unless they're a prereq. XD

I like you Pomegranates Full and Fine but the only reason anyone ever takes you is you're a prereq for Dark Roads of the Dead, which lets people teleport to the underworld.

[marsh garden]

Pomegranates Full and Fine shouldn't exist

abyssals shouldn't get better at keeping people alive with regular food

if they wanted a prereq that's fine, but it shouldn't have been a pure solar clone

[tulip folio]

My hot take is Pomegranates Full and Fine shouldn't exist because 'rolling survival to find food for people' is a mundane use of the ability, not a charm.

[marsh garden]

(no the principle doesn't count)

also yeah that

literally what else is mundane survival for lmao

but unforchies it was a solar charm so we live with the consequences

at least the infernal version is neat

[tulip folio]

'I have used my solaroid-teir charms to find edible berries'

Iki, who is a Queen's Scout: "Amazing, such unprecedented power."

[marsh garden]

but i like, actively do not want Pomegranates Full and Fine

i don't want that form of competence

i want to suck at helping my circle with basic logistics of the living

[tulip folio]

...heheheheh. Small addition to make it cuter.

[marsh garden]

...okay actually

my take

Corpse Needs Nothing should be abyssals' Food-Gathering Exercise equivalent

not pomegranates

"pomegranates of hades" can be a different charm higher up the tree that's like, a lot better and does special things

but their subsistence equivalent should just be the selfish "i'm a zombie, i don't need to eat"

"fuck you, got mine"

[tulip folio]

Dreamborn Feast (5; Simple; One Meal; Eclipse; Essence 1) The Magizurek rolls Domestic Work to bless the food for a meal, stretching it further than those preparing it would have expected. It provides sustainance for a number of additional people equal to her successes. Even the most unappetising of food blessed this way has a hearty, pleasent taste and uneaten food dissolves into gossamer afterwards. 

This charm can be used on a number of sleeping characters equal to successes within the Wyld (Such as a middlemarch), whose dreams will be full of wonderful feasts, providing sustainance as if they had actually eaten.

[marsh garden]

i like that addendum

[tulip folio]

...I might increase the cost a bit and give it a hair more shiny as well...mundane-ass capability charm.

Dreamborn Feast (5m, 1wp; Simple; One Meal; Eclipse; Essence 1) The Magizurek rolls Domestic Work to bless the food for a meal, stretching it further than those preparing it would have expected. The blessed food is cleansed of mundane poisons and diseases, providing sustenance for a number of additional people equal to her successes. Even the most unappetising of food blessed this way has a hearty, pleasent taste and uneaten food dissolves into gossamer afterwards. 

This charm can be used on a number of sleeping characters equal to successes within the Wyld (Such as a middlemarch), whose dreams will be full of wonderful feasts, providing sustainance as if they had actually eaten.

Added a willpower cost but it cleans out purely mundane poisons and disease.

Won't do anything to magical poison and disease

But it means you won't get Food Poisoning

So you get the food stretched a bit and if it's during a plague or something, the food won't be infected.

Something that Local Mortals would really like even if it's not that important for 'Exalts staying alive'

[marsh garden]

unrelated

[tulip folio]

As this is designed to be a house spirit. It's not a big combatant but mortals like it.

[marsh garden]

TIL that there is one auroral manse in existence

[tulip folio]

oh?

[tulip folio]

Oooh, fun.

Does it have any manse rules?

Also: Oldest Daughter of an Incarnae and likely inheritor to some of aurora's power when he was lost. She's likely a bloody powerful god.

[marsh garden]

unfortunately no

that's all there is on it

but it and Starless Austera do seem like a fantastic hook

[tulip folio]

Need to finish writing up fluff but the mechanics are sorted.

[velvet raft]

Hm … pile bunker tonfa?

[tulip folio]

Sounds very fun

[tulip folio]

I hope this seems interesting as a House Spirit Fae.

[spiral cosmos]

Among the more powerful ones, yeah

Old daughter of an Incarna with an important job gives you lots of juice

She has a qc coming

[velvet raft]

God that'd be such a funny hook for an Exalt to have a manse

"Yeah no a fathomlessly powerful god gave it to me unsolicited"

[tulip folio]

Oooooh. That will be fun.

[tulip folio]

'Just threw the keys at my head and said it's my problem now'

[spiral cosmos]

she is very very grumpy

[velvet raft]

Give it to a completely inappropriate type of Exalt

[prisma sun]

I was actually also planning on making a character that was an elder daughter of an Incarnae

[velvet raft]

Who now also has her as a 3-dot mentor

[prisma sun]

I still don't get how much of like

Space

Exists in Exalted

[velvet raft]

It's left kinda deliberately vague

But the existence of stuff like devil stars suggests that at some point the sky becomes something Wyld-ish

[fierce star]

how did I not know this where is this writeup

[spiral cosmos]

sids

[spiral cosmos]

the firmament is a physical thing with void beneath it and stars in that void

[velvet raft]

Hm

Gotcha

So there’s atmosphere, then space-ish void with stars in it for a ways, then firmament, and then the Wyld beyond that? Or is there nothing beyond it?

[spiral cosmos]

implicitly the firmament itself is like

the boundary marker with the wyld on the other side

People kind of forget this but Games of Divinity and 1e Sids is very clear that the Five Maidens share names with actual planets

This is still the case in 3e despite being deeply deemphadized

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are real planets up above in the void

this is also confusing somewhat bc the firmament can refer to Creation's space in general

it wasn't canonically truly defined in Agents but I tend to think of the Firmament's vault as basically being a gigantic iron wall/mountain range hybrid that serves as the roof of Creation, keeping out the Wyld as far as it goes, with stars migrating through the void and regularly landing on its upside down peaks as they go

[prisma sun]

The character I was thinking of making was an elder daughter of the Unconquered Sun who represents the virtue of Valor and then nothing else

[velvet raft]

More-or-less like that old Abrahamic model of a flat world with the firmament in almost a dome configuration, surrounded by primal chaos?

[spiral cosmos]

like rāqīaʿ, yeah

if you wanted to extend the analogy then the Wyld serves as the waters above

it's like the metaphysical roof over the support pillars of the Elemental Poles

[velvet raft]

I was today years old when I looked up what a shrike was, jfc

Extremely cute murder birbs

[fierce star]

love a good shrike

[marsh garden]

it's funny how so much fantasy uses "shrike" as a label for cool things

when they're the fluffiest little goobers

they are cool

[fierce star]

there's a species ofthem native to my area and when I was a kid I saw one of them fighting a cottonmouth snake that must've been at least three and a half feet long or so. And it just like. Killed it and wrapped it around the barbed wire fence around my neighbor's property.

[marsh garden]

but they're not badass-looking

they're all action no presentation

it makes it really funny to think about all the things that evoke them

and just turn that dial 30% cuter

[spiral cosmos]

i love shrikes so much

[velvet raft]

Gotta name a character Benevolent Shrike

[spiral cosmos]

hozier in the background

[marsh garden]

okay unrelated, was just double-checking shit after adding MAs to the gsheet

and what the fuck this is just 5m for a reflexive surprise attack, no wp cost

god damn

[wise ocean]

lot of setup for not a ton of payoff, though

[marsh garden]

?

[wise ocean]

EB is swords only, so not compatible with any other stealth styles

which means your only route for getting that first surprise attack is the previous charms in the series

which is a lot of effort for a payoff of "this is undodgeable," effectively

[spiral cosmos]

it's not wildly onerous i think, with the reset condition on the even blade form variant

with that said close your eyes and look does also require acting first

so it's kind of wobbly in reliability, when you're doing okay on initiative i think the sequence of hits gets really nasty

in retrospect i kind of wish there had been a function on close your eyes and look for if you asked all the questions 😭

[wise ocean]

oh, definitely not wildly onerous, but not busted

[marsh garden]

i think Mistweaver (with...some rewriting) is probably gonna be the best thing to pair with even blade

[wise ocean]

it's a kind of "oh that's nice"

[velvet raft]

You can also get surprise attacks off of various splat stealth charms even if your styles don't have anything for it, but yeah I don't think it's that crazy

[marsh garden]

as a chopping sword that makes you way better at sneaking

[wise ocean]

vbos guarantees this but vbos really wants radiant breath, so it comes out in the wash

[spiral cosmos]

simply pair even blade with the best stealth style in the game... steel devil

[velvet raft]

I love Radiant Breath

[marsh garden]

oh yeah right, there's a steel devil secret art that's supposed to make it not ass, right?

[spiral cosmos]

the sum total of the backer request was "please fix steel devil"

[velvet raft]

lol

Admittedly I, too, love it when there are two swords and they go chop chop schwing schwing

[marsh garden]

i don't have any interest in dual swords, but i dislike that a nearly unusable MA is in the game

[velvet raft]

TBH if I were going to steel devil I'd probably Hook Swords it so I could mesh it with snake and centipede :D

[spiral cosmos]

snake and centipede is an extremely effective combo

[velvet raft]

It is one of my faves

[spiral cosmos]

although i think a dip for crushing claw blow in mantis is really the thing that holds that stuff together best

motion of myriad legs + crushing claw blow x3

[velvet raft]

Ye

Also lets you initiate grapples with dex

Which can be nice

[prisma sun]

I am hoping Golden Barque fits into my Falcon Cmos gameplan

[tulip folio]

I keep being tempted to do up a charm that lets one grapple like Basalisks can, where it's a 'you're locking eyes' rather than a 'You've walked over there and grabbed the guy'.

[spiral cosmos]

it should pair okay with falcon

[velvet raft]

That sounds cool, Iki

[spiral cosmos]

movement synergy

[velvet raft]

I'm really curious about the Secrets style

And also all of the other ones >_>

[marsh garden]

i'm so hyped for prince-eating mendicant now

i will pair it with devil-prince sword

and make anyone that knows either of those styles make utterly flummoxed expressions

[velvet raft]

Prince-Eating Mendicant?

[marsh garden]

one of the criminal styles!

you are a mendicant

that eats princes

[tulip folio]

Hypnotic Gaze
Cost: 5m; Mins: Charisma, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: Psyche
Duration: Until Grapple is released
Prerequisite Charms: None

The Wanderer makes a special ranged Grapple gambit with (Charisma + [Presence, Performance or Integrity]) against a character within medium range that can perceive her, locking enchanting eyes with them. The Wanderer rolls (Charisma + [Presence, Performance or Integrity]) for the control roll, while the defender rolls (Wits + Integrity). Blind or mindless characters are immune to this effect. The Wanderer can only Restrain or Release a character grappled this way.

Keys:

Puppeteer(Essence 2): The Wanderer may Drag characters grappled this way, expending only a single control round and moving them any direction without needing to move herself.

Eyes of Flame(Puppeteer): The Wanderer can Savage a character grappled this way with (Charisma + [Presence, Performance or Integrity]) unarmed attacks, burning them from the inside out with wyrdfire.

Just a Glance: The Wanderer suffers no penalties to their defence while grappling this way and may flurry as normal.

Behemoth-Taming Gaze (Essence 3): The Wanderer can grapple targets of Legendary Size this way.

Made it so you need to Buy Into Full Grapple Stuff as 'doing it at range' is itself a big bonus.

[marsh garden]

is two charms (base + key) really enough to stealth-savage someone from medium?

that feels a bit cheap

[spiral cosmos]

https://tenor.com/view/xiangling-genshin-genshin-impact-picmix-eyeballs-gif-11118831238629234811

[marsh garden]

the tree is cool though

[tulip folio]

Well, it's not really intended to be stealthy

[marsh garden]

but you can do it from stealth

[prisma sun]

Jerma style

[tulip folio]

...I'm not sure you really can since one of the requirements is that the target perceive you.

[marsh garden]

ah, i was thinking that you stare at the target who gets sleep paralysised

while nobody else sees

[tulip folio]

Yeah this doesn't have any special stealth rules, it's no more subtle than if you walked up and put him in a noogie.

[prisma sun]

Well there is a small problem that you can hide from people who can perceive you with certain charms

[marsh garden]

gotcha, so it's just untouchable mostly uncontestable grapple from medium

[prisma sun]

So you might want to add a more explicit caveat

[marsh garden]

complaint retracted

[tulip folio]

...I mean, it's no less contestable than a normal grapple? They still get a roll and honestly a roll on a dicepool that is less likely to be low than Strength + Brawl.

[marsh garden]

oh sorry uncontestable as in they can't smack you back

which i assume is reasonable for a couple charms deep into a solaroid tier

or celestial in general

considering the shit that grapple trees already get up to, that's about what i'd expect

[tulip folio]

Yeah, ti's sorta why I wanted there to be some hoops to get through to get to 'can do the ranged savage'

As 'turning a guy into red mist' is the big grapple concern

Being able to Turn Off Your Own Turns to Turn Off The Other Guy's Turns with Restrain is less a primary concern

[marsh garden]

oh i don't think you're ever restraining

just ignoring it til e2 and then instantly blowing up every combat exalt

which is what grapple already does

this + peacock shadow eyes is killer flavor, too

take like, burning gaze, and i assume they'll have a wordless influence tree too

so you just do everything by staring at people

[marsh garden]

or right it's like

burning name, isn't it

oh wait huh, did you change the charm?

i swear it let you slam

[tulip folio]

I removed that part, yeah

[marsh garden]

query

Love Song to the World is a sorcerous relic (Exalted, p. 470), and can be taken at character creation as a sorcerous initiation instead of requiring the Artifact Merit. Its Evocations blur the line between spell and song, and draw on the memories and philosophy of the Sidereal sage whose bones it was carved from. The chime is exceptional equipment (Exalted, p. 580) for music-based Performance rolls, and for influence rolls against characters whose lives the wielder earnestly wishes to improve.

Love Song to the World has the following shaping rituals:

Moonlit Revel Serenade: Once per scene, the sorcerer may gain (Performance) sorcerous motes when her music inspires a listener to impulsive action, or to passionately express his ideals. They last for the rest of the scene. If her roll leveraged a current festival or the listener's anonymity, she gains (Essence) additional motes.

Elegy of Lightless Skies: The sorcerer gains one sorcerous mote whenever she inspires grief, introspection, or wonder with a performance. Once per day, when this aids a stranger struggling with artistic expression or allows a stranger to escape persecution, she gains additional sorcerous motes equal to the highest Intimacy she has related to compassion, hope, or love for the world.

Muse's Astral Medley: Once per story, when the sorcerer sings of ways the world could be more beautiful, or ways people's lives could be improved, and successfully instills a Principle related to her description, she gains ([Appearance or Charisma] + Performance) sorcerous motes, which last for the rest of the story. If she succeeds against multiple characters, she gains additional motes equal to the effective Size (Exalted, p. 206) of the influenced characters. These motes can only be spent on spells that directly cultivate the world described.

these shaping rituals yea or nay

concerned there's too much overlap

[prisma sun]

The two first ones do seem

The same, to me

I would allow a more physical way of getting it that doesnt require an audience

Like a Stamina Ability roll to sing for hours straight

[marsh garden]

i'll eat the second for that

[spiral cosmos]

infernals sorcery section may have some balance points of use iirc

[tulip folio]

I like the new sorcery based on Piccolo Aura Farming

Gains Sorcerous Motes

[marsh garden]

i have stolen from it three times already

one directly (lunar has higher understanding enlightenment)

and two indirectly (abyssal has enlightenment of the summit but interpreted through the lens of Embodiment of the Maw, and took higher understanding enlightenment for being buried)

it's a very fun initiation

i am excited to take posture of bound power

and jojo pose

[spiral cosmos]

rise and grind. every day i'm out here crawling out of the mud at 6am for necromantic enlightenment gains to be maximized

death is the ultimate productivity upscale

[bleak hazel]

it's easier to find than the bathful of blood that my moonshadow needs but harder to scrub off you afterwards

[marsh garden]

it is not easier to find than a bathful of blood, you just have to kill like twenty dudes

...for a shallow bath

now, easier to achieve

sure

[wise ocean]

you can kill twenty dudes with one average white reaper tick. get grinding

[spiral cosmos]

those orphans weren't making good use of their blood anyway

[bleak hazel]

yeah that attracts a lot of attention but for some reason if my merchant prince of skullstone just happens to end up with the blood of a few dozen people in his bath but didn't kill any of them himself nobody gets cross

[spiral cosmos]

remember: without international law, there's no such thing as war crimes !

[wise ocean]

well orphan blood is a different resource entirely

[bleak hazel]

the two shaping rituals Crimson has at E3 are "bathe in blood" and "make effigies", which means his necromantic meditation chamber looks like that one room from RE8

[wise ocean]

battlefield blood collection is nonrenewable but considered socially and internationally acceptable, while orphanage-based blood collection can be industrialized in a replicatable fashion but is not socially acceptable

[spiral cosmos]

make it make sense

[marsh garden]

Hope just has Consumed By Whispers

[spiral cosmos]

you don't approve of my orphan crushing machine? up yours, woke moralists. we'll see who cancels who

[marsh garden]

he's going to take...it doesn't have a name because it's in core, but the Scarred By Nightmares derangement one

[tulip folio]

This feels applicable for Basicly Every Necromancer

[wise ocean]

excuse you. orphan crushing is inefficient, as you then have to sieve out the flesh from your necromantic reagent.

in this house, we have the orphan exsanguinating machine.

keeps the corpse intact so you can also reanimate it afterwards

[marsh garden]

the inefficiency's part of the point

wasteful disregard of human life resonates well

[prisma sun]

Quick deaths arent chivalrous

Also @bleak hazel did ya see i finished the gloves conceptually

[wise ocean]

man, orphan zombies could probably be their own statblock

minus a couple dice on the killing part but with a trait that makes them even more tarpit-y

what are you going to do, mr. dawn, kill a zombie orphan? a second time?

[prisma sun]

I feel like "statblock for zombie children" is one of those things you probably shouldnt do any more

[tulip folio]

while I'd not do it Literally For Children, I could see room for 'zombies but deliberately set up to be as human-like and empathy provoking as possible'

[prisma sun]

That could work yeah

[bleak hazel]

zombie equivalent of Loveless

[marsh garden]

i think it's something you shouldn't standardize anymore, outside of Indie Sicko Projects

since a lot of indie sicko projects are all about exploring that rancid and uncomfy shit

[bleak hazel]

I did not, I've been a bit occupied last couple of days

[marsh garden]

but it's easy to moderate to the temperament of your group

[bleak hazel]

do you just have the whole lot in a doc somewhere?

[tulip folio]

Pitiful: Folorn require a Difficulty 3 (Perception + Awareness) check to identify as undead, appearing otherwise as sick but living mortals. A character cannot take a hostile action against Forlorn unless they have a Major Intimacy that supports doing so or they spend a willpower to resist for the scene.

[prisma sun]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mYq8A1gGjWFA1lnjX5uuq7MJymj_JAs_cz-F8UqjHRE/edit?usp=sharing

[tulip folio]

My thoughts on what I'd do them as is less 'Hahah, I will make people kill innocents to fight me' in-universe and more necromantic infiltration tools.

Something to let a necromancer bring a squad of zombies into a town before he attacks

So they're zombies that are Carefully Patched Up, Dressed Up, Makeup and with some extra work to make sure they mostly Move Like A Not Great Place Mortal rather than roaming about arms raised going 'brains'

[marsh garden]

i would specifically have it be something that sneaks into slums, yeah

you disguise one as a hard-luck beggar or a sickly waif, Traveling To The Big City For Treatment™

and make them your eyes and a disease vector

[tulip folio]

I'd also likely note them as something that necromancers with some delusions of grandeur like because 'Zombies that don't stink and don't make me look icky' make them feel better than full on rotting corpses. XD

[marsh garden]

as opposed to an active killer

[tulip folio]

See: Skullstone with Zombie Laborers/Servants.

[bleak hazel]

skullstone is mentioned to mostly use skeletons for grunt work because they don't rot everywhere, with expensive zombies being fashionably embalmed and so on

I have occasionally wondered what Crimson's pack mule zombie hordes look like and I think it's mostly skeletons with Forever Winter cargo rigs on them

[wise ocean]

oh absolutely not, this is firmly in the category of A Bit (thus, I hope, the joking tone)

though I'm pleased that the bit was inspirational towarda a serious take

[tulip folio]

Makes sense.

...now I'm kinda tempted to do up a couple of Alt-Zombies that are still absolute dogshit but slightly different to baseline zombies.

Like 'these are skeletons, so they're not spreading disease but are lighter on their feet' etc

[bleak hazel]

it would be nice to have a statblock for the transport zombies

[marsh garden]

ah yes, these are skeletons so they're resistant to slashing damage and weak to bludgeoning damage

[tulip folio]

Hahahah, I'm not doing that.

[marsh garden]

it would be very funny as a one-off bit on april fool's never to be seen again

[bleak hazel]

I do like to imagine that skullstone troops have occasionally just loaded up the cargo rigs with something reasonably durable and had lines of zombies sit in front of them as cover

as a kind of skullstone variant on a wagon fort

[tulip folio]

My thoughts was 'Losing some of the extra zombie health levels in exchange for better mobility'

As they have Less Weight

[marsh garden]

did you ever play dark souls 2?

[bleak hazel]

they're not actually smart so you can't tell them to form neatly drilled lines

[tulip folio]

And zombies don't really care about muscle for movement

[bleak hazel]

but you can just kind of blob them in place

[tulip folio]

If that makes sense?

[bleak hazel]

I did not

[marsh garden]

damn

okay lemme pull up the goober i'm thinking of then

[prisma sun]

All I could think of for this is like

[marsh garden]

ah, excellent

there are these things in a fucked up rot area

[prisma sun]

https://tenor.com/view/nbi-ground-battle-gif-24023518

I just imagined this but skeletons for some reason

[bleak hazel]

those things are sadly way too big, that would probably be in to corpse-engine territory

[marsh garden]

giant corpses that fling slow blobs of death magic at you, with their overseers on top

oh

no

it's like

10 feet tall lol

oh voy's

that would be a sick corpse-engine

[bleak hazel]

thousand-corpse goliaths can do that and dump out size 5 zombie battlegroups

unfortunately TCGs have like 40 health levels and giga soak so they aren't actually much fun to fight

[marsh garden]

i wonder if someone's statted any of the other namedropped ones up

[bleak hazel]

so a frame that just dropped cool zombies would perhaps be a more sane one

[prisma sun]

I imagine dropping that into a scene is less of a "fight this" and more a distraction carnifex

[marsh garden]

they're basically indestructible unless you press the single point button or an SMA doom combo or some similar shit

[bleak hazel]

they're Legendary Size, so they in fact walk off both of those quite happily without other specific tech

[marsh garden]

41 HLs, 17 soak, LS, can take free crippling injuries

7 parry

bro specced into Immunity To Everything Technique

[tulip folio]

Skeletons are Zombies (p503, core rulebook) with the following changes:

Health Levels: -0x2/-1x2/-2x3/-4/Incap.
Actions: Labor: 4 Dice (Can perform strength 3 feats of strength); Senses: 4 dice; Threaten: 4 dice; Tracking: 4 dice; Movement: 5 Dice;

Combat Movement: 4 dice
Evasion 3, Parry 0
Soak/Hardness: 5/0

Special Attacks: None

-1 HL and no special attacks but they gained +2 dice of movement, +1 evasion and +2 soak.

[prisma sun]

Oh sids can instantly kill them with 1 medicine charm

[marsh garden]

well yeah, but sids can do whatever they want

[tulip folio]

Being 5 dice of movement outside of combat makes them better at 'carrying stuff about' but the loss of stench is genuinely a notable downgrade vs other battlegroups.

[prisma sun]

Thats why theyre the best baby

[bleak hazel]

I think there has to be some other "explode mindless E1 undead" stuff somewhere

purplesids are great ghostbusters but if a Liminal can't tell a TCG to shut up and sit down I'd be surprised

[tulip folio]

They're very minor changes but zombies don't have a lot of stats to them/I hope the skeles look okay.

[marsh garden]

well, you can put a ghost into the TCG and then it's not mindless

and just gets the normal amount of mogged

[spiral cosmos]

corpusmogged...

[wise ocean]

i'm hoping that I can squeeze more HLs of damage out of CKF when that drops

I want my scythe combo to one-shot a thousand-corpse goliath

[tulip folio]

...yeah, I might put together a few alt-zombies. They'll all be absolute garbage one way or another as they're still zombies but they'll be good for necromancer variety.

Zombie Dogs/Giant Rats is one I have on the brain.

[prisma sun]

I feel like you dont need full statblocks so much as like

Zombie Latent Abilities

[marsh garden]

yeah

[wise ocean]

(since they auto-fill all three boxes - they have no major or defining intimacy to go on living, they have a major or defining intimacy relating to causing harm, and they have a major or defining positive outlook on death)

so you can just smack them from the word go

[marsh garden]

it's not like the zombie statblock does anything super complex

lmao

true

then you just buy up to shadow circle so you can stunt on your idiot friends by making TCGs and then one-shotting them

[tulip folio]

My plan was less 'full statblock' and more 'here are the small changes you make'

[wise ocean]

so far we're up to 27 HLs but I have faith we can get that last 14 from somewhere

[marsh garden]

yeah i think that's just what latents are for

[tulip folio]

Like what I did here for skeles

[marsh garden]

"skeleton" should prolly just be (Latent) Loses one -1 HL, gains a labor pool of 4 dice and +1 to combat movement

or just loses stank

since they're not getting much

makes it easier to cram a bunch in

[prisma sun]

Also gives them a 4 dice dance pool

https://tenor.com/view/good-morning-gif-2708530935145257624

[marsh garden]

zombies should already get that

i've seen the Thriller mv

[tulip folio]

Zombie Dogs are gunna go down 2 health levels (To normal human levels) but get the zoomies.

[bleak hazel]

necrotheaters, where trained zombies perform```

already a thing, actually

[marsh garden]

ah, darktide dogs...

[bleak hazel]

getting enough thaumaturgists and shoddy necromancers to make zombies for him is one of Crimson's big problems with expanding outside Skullstone

[marsh garden]

how's that a problem?

[bleak hazel]

if this was 2e I'd just start an academy for aspiring zombie caravaneers but it's a bit more nebulous this time

[marsh garden]

just grab a fistful of orphans

start drowning them until one pops up with a spell

done

(note: effectiveness may vary)

[tulip folio]

Do you want solars? This is how you get solars!

[marsh garden]

if you get a solar just finish drowning it

[prisma sun]

Its like if you needed a special gene to be a software developer

[marsh garden]

it's an eight-year-old, it can't fight back against the doom-swirlie

[bleak hazel]

yeah, I don't need tons of trained zombie attendants since zombies can clearly be trained to do manual labour and other basic tasks by non-necromancers

but I do ideally want one guy per caravan who can stand the zombies back up again or use bits from one to fix another

like a napoleonic ship's doctor, except zombies

and you can't use proper necromancers for that because they're far too rare and valuable

[marsh garden]

i wonder how Ysyr structures its training

since obviously it still has the ability to consistently pump out sorcerers and their many shoddy aides

wonder if it involves formalized schooling or if they can dig around for the potential

[bleak hazel]

at the moment skullstone's zombies are made by regular morticians, so I assume they have some kind of 2e-style thaumaturgy trick for it or basically everyone gets screened for zombification talent at some point

[marsh garden]

maybe both

[bleak hazel]

which is currently what fuels the Grey Mirror Company but really he wants to expand a long way beyond Skullstone so he can't just stick to recruiting people the Silver Prince's apparatus churns out

[prisma sun]

how do you even tell

fuckin

Know The Wind checks on people?

[wise ocean]

It Is Unknown

probably just make something up

[bleak hazel]

young adult assigning-the-future-to-the-teens test but it's just "can you make this corpse get up and walk around, here are the instructions"

[tulip folio]

Okay, putting them together with as little as space as I can while keeping it readable/simple. How's this looking?

[bleak hazel]

as far as I know there's nothing on their canonical methods aside from the fact that making different kinds of zombies is a two-dot ritual thaumaturgy that takes eight hours

which would be perfectly reasonable to teach to people if you assume it can be taught

[tulip folio]

A Skeleton Dog/Giant rat has less health levels than a mortal but has Big Zoomies.

[bleak hazel]

variations grant between two and four dots of Innate Merits or Mutations
what's the funniest mods to put on your zombie

[prisma sun]

My 8 hour shift making A Single Zombie that's combat effectiveness boils down to getting stepped on by a Solar to gain a +1 stunt value

[bleak hazel]

combat against supernatural opposition is pretty much the least productive thing to use zombies for but unfortunately it's most of what there are mechanics for using them for

[lament owl]

Honestly zombie battlegroup aren’t that bad though

Like

They do have Might

[marsh garden]

Exalted Healing

wait fuck

that's 5 dots

dammit

[prisma sun]

I have actually learned that morale-less Battlegroups can kill like

a lot of Exalts

[bleak hazel]

against mortals they're not useless at all, Perfect Morale does a lot and mechanics-aside fighting things you have to physically hack apart and that can't get tired is absolute hell for normal humans

[marsh garden]

second option: thaumaturgist

it is a four-dot innate merit

[tulip folio]

The Stink is just Genuinely Good vs most battlegroups.

Mortals don't pass the anti-stink roll super reliably.

[bleak hazel]

zombies can actually fight the kind of 30 minute maximum exertion wave attack that Hollywood thinks a pre-modern battle was

actual humans can't

so throwing them at the enemy army while your actual good mortal troops hang out and clean up afterwards while totally fresh is a good idea

[tulip folio]

Hurling this at mortal battlegroups with like 2-5 dice of stamina + resistance.

[bleak hazel]

huh, so it is

I suppose having Crimson make zombies that make zombies is cheating but quite funny

[prisma sun]

can you...

do that