Exalted

[merry arch]

monsoon can't get enough of turning terrestrials into red mist

[limpid badge]

someday i will learn how to build a liminal that doesn't suck shit at combat. i thought she would do better

[velvet raft]

Mmmmulch

Mulllllllch

[merry arch]

fwiw even if it didnt go how you'd have liked, it was an engaging fight because of my dice luck being bad

[wise ocean]

blease do not make me fight a melee person I will explode to Reliable 1

[bleak hazel]

I suspect three deebs of any kind are going to kick Telek's teeth in but there is backup close at hand if necessary

[merry arch]

monsoon doesn't care about fair fights she'll single out a motherfucker who looks weaker than the rest of the pack.

does this look like the face of a person who respects you

[limpid badge]

its sooo okay and it WAS

i just have to make ready for Bonnie's Revenge

which will probably not go great

[merry arch]

HAHAHA

ill be honest i would be so down to play bonnie as a pc eventually she's so neat

[limpid badge]

🥺

thank u....

[merry arch]

yes ofc! i love her a lot she's a very cool character.

[limpid badge]

she and her sibling and they both know they're aren't related anymore, that bonnie isn't the same bonnie who died!!

[bleak hazel]

yeah, if you want to duel PCs 1:1 you need the fighty pool maxed out

[limpid badge]

i am really happy with them as Liminals that Exist in Creation

[bleak hazel]

cost of doing business

[limpid badge]

bc fuck does it feel like im gonna hafta work hard to make liminals work until a book comes out

and i like the idea of Terrestrial Abyssals/Ghosthunters

[bleak hazel]

if there's a bunch of 'em less so

[limpid badge]

but we need to carve out something for them other than what if we did promethean in exalted lol

i say this as someone whose egg was fundamentally damaged by promethean

[merry arch]

and if i can find the time/energy/motivation to homebrew liminal stuff i'd be so down to work out a charm loadout for her. it'd be fun. but i am bad at exalted homebrew 😔

[limpid badge]

i really did like what the book suggested for her as a gimmick but

would you believe me if i told you this e3 duelist character had exactly 3 combat charms in her fucking list

[merry arch]

guh

[limpid badge]

and a dodge charm written in such a way as to imply it could never be added to static values

[merry arch]

that's so bad

[limpid badge]

after bonnie i kinda stopped using that book and have been cludging my npcs together yay

[merry arch]

understandable!!!!!!

[clever steeple]

That's the wisest choice when running Storyteller systems yeah

[merry arch]

anyways with how thoroughly i eventually trounced her i think it would be fun to play the other side of the monsoon-bonnie dynamic because a frankenstein ghost hunter sounds fucking fun as hell

[bleak hazel]

the more modern splatbooks do rather better but Adversaries is split hard between "too undergunned to be a fight for reasonably competent players" and "giant gigaboss"

[limpid badge]

bonnies GIMMICK works i'd just have to rewrite her charms from the ground up
spend HLs on riders for very cheap charms, pay expensive motes to recoup your HLs mid-fight, out-sustain

[merry arch]

yea that's cute

very fun

[limpid badge]

you'll notice that the fights i put monsoon against are with people who have sustain bc i figured that would be the most interesting for her I Am Going To Hit You So Hard style

[merry arch]

HAHAHA

this is very understandable

her build begins to rapidly fall apart once she runs out of motes

[limpid badge]

im proud of lula for tapping her out

[merry arch]

yes it was very good

[bleak hazel]

I do like mote attrition builds

Rival is basically built to be as annoying as possible while not actually dying, because he has tons of withering counterattacks, but that requires me to be OK with getting punched in the face a few times before my opponent gets tired

(and not eat shit to clashes, which can be an issue)

[limpid badge]

i should Consider BH's actual "build" more but right now its uh

pretty generic dawnoid i will shit dice at you

but the black blade gives her a lot of really nasty control effects!!

just gotta work up to buying it

[bleak hazel]

Abyssal Melee is pretty much a build on its own

[limpid badge]

that's fair im just looking at it going "is this it, is this enough. can i survive off GLORIOUS CARNAGE TYPHOON and a bad attitude"

[bleak hazel]

grab the parry stuff and you're good on not-dying as long as you aren't obscenely unlucky

[limpid badge]

but also bh is built. pretty wide at the start bc its rude to show up with the Kill Everyone Forever toys and nothing else

[limpid badge]

aaah see that's the rub i only roll well when its funny for me to be saved.

[bleak hazel]

in the case of Beesgame, having Rival in the party makes you downright immortal once he hits E2, but that'll be a hot minute

[limpid badge]

you're looking at a girl who has palyed warhammer for decades and won three games of it total

(i don't count the games i won against my dad that was playing against my dad. those kinds of games don't count)

[spiral cosmos]

oughhhhhhhh

[bleak hazel]

(it's not the most exciting build but it certainly blends things)

[merry arch]

yea im doing some funny melee/necromancy hybrid shit for reveler long-term + red revel really likes doing a lot of cute extra attacks + the extra attacks/counters from abyssal melee

[limpid badge]

im just trying to make the Black Blade an actual style to give her some juice...

[merry arch]

he has no war but will be summoning skeletons so they turn into a giant whirlwind of debris that makes him harder and more dangerous to hit.

[limpid badge]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1R_4s9TKH0xeGAGsz5yzuS7S_Ek_YBoOly0t4EDIypOQ/edit?tab=t.0 speaking of. please help. with briar's help its a lot more complete (enough to probably start using?) but. gotta do more tricks...

[bleak hazel]

if you want to make sure you're really hard to kill just grab whatever the Hail-Shattering Practice mirror is (and maybe an ox-body or two)

Fluttering Moth Defence

[merry arch]

yea that's one of the first charms im pickin up

[limpid badge]

her current melee suite is don't die

[bleak hazel]

the fact that I can't think of most of the Abyssal Melee charms' actual names is perhaps not ideal

[limpid badge]

do the basics

[bleak hazel]

but yeah, grab Fluttering Moth and Unfurling Iron Lotus and people are going to die

"actually you didn't hit me" and "I hit you hard, I go again" respectively

[limpid badge]

yay!

bloody hand!

she's going to kill so many people.

she should get to do it more. she's being really polite by not killing everyone now.

[buoyant summit]

I admittedly wonder what the reason is for taking Black Blade from a Reaver daiklave to a Reaper

[wise ocean]

style points

[buoyant summit]

Fair Enough

XD

[limpid badge]

yeah bloody hand is not so much the choppy sort, you know?

she has to be a lady maria

[buoyant summit]

fair enough

We will admit that when we had Fel 'fight' against her and when we watched Guolin fight her, she did seem the choppy type

But

Lady Maria goes hard

[south spade]

Im at work again do that means further attempts to read

[limpid badge]

idk that's really to you

[south spade]

Oh sorry i meant So

I was Announcing It

[clever steeple]

What are you supposed to read after finishing the Corebook

[bleak hazel]

depends what you're into

got a splat you like? read their book

want more setting in general? Across The Eight Directions + The Realm

[prisma sun]

Ya basically

Pick your favorite Other Guy

[fierce star]

I don't reccomend reading Arms of the Chosen or Miracles of the Solar Exalted, but otherwise whatever draws your eye

[bleak hazel]

Sidereal book both has Sids, who are hilarious, and a fun look at the political landscape of Heaven

[south spade]

Those are the ones written before chuds were ousted yes?

[prisma sun]

I dont think the 3e core were chuds

I just think they were not that good

[limpid badge]

well no one of them was a sexpest

that's why it was sexpest and hamster

anyway

[limpid badge]

as others have said Pick Ur Dudes and Go

[prisma sun]

Ah okay

[limpid badge]

maybe take a look at Across the Eight Directions if you wanna get more ideas about Creation

[velvet raft]

Arms is worth looking at eventually, but Miracles of the Solar Exalted is an absolute trashfire

[south spade]

So whats wrong with it?

[marsh garden]

mm, it was made before the team transition, and also before anyone other than solars were out

so it's a big book of artifacts For Solars Specifically™

[spiral cosmos]

The problem with Miracles of the Solar Exalted are many but largely boil down to Morke writing them all in one weekend

[marsh garden]

oh, miracles

not arms

right

[velvet raft]

It's a bunch of badly written solar charms, basically

[marsh garden]

there are a couple well-written solar charms in there!

and abyssals got like, one of them

[bleak hazel]

yeah, there's nothing to actually read there for fun setting things, it's all charms anyway

even if they were good charms I wouldn't recommend it here

[south spade]

ALRIGHT

ITS TIME

COMBAT

Oh i instantly see part of what inspired winged’s approach to anime ass combat in her game

[limpid badge]

Combat!!!

[south spade]

AHHHH

Thats scary

[limpid badge]

seeing it as a flowchart does help me grok it, esp bc like. charms happen at steps throughout

[prisma sun]

Straight up

I forget Initiative Shift is a thing

[bleak hazel]

it is the number one reason I like to knock people down and then play with them until they get back up again, I don't like getting reversed on when I go for crash into decisive

although it's usually still worth it

[south spade]

@last schooner Dude the eclipse phase curse is just all games now

Tried to read more exalted and got instantly super slammed

[marsh garden]

?

[south spade]

Oh uh

When i tried to read eclipse phase at work

It would summon hordes of customers

[marsh garden]

oh

[south spade]

And now thats happening with exalted too

:p

[marsh garden]

nothing about the game ic

[south spade]

So whats like

An average amount of health a decisive attack would drop someone by

[marsh garden]

40% of your initiative

(most people have charms that add to this in some way, so let's say more like 60% of your initiative)

[south spade]

Interesting

[marsh garden]

everyone starts a fight with 3 initiative + their join battle, so let's average that as 7-8 initiative

[south spade]

I guess a different way to ask this question: how many times are you generally gonna make decisive attacks in like

Say a 1v1

[bleak escarp]

It's also like, it's a bunch of solar charms written on commission by a guy who was hostile to the concepts pitched

[south spade]

Also lmao sorry the fact that intiative is still tied to turn order is really funny

[prisma sun]

You hope to do a decisive attack Once

[south spade]

Okay ball

Thatd rad

[bleak escarp]

There's a particularly infamous case with someone who asked for a naval charm to have a Picard Maneuovre moment, which is clearly somebody asking for like, a charm to invent and pull off An Unexpected Maneuovre to get the drop on someone, but Morke read it as 'I want Solar captains to be able to literally teleport their ships', and he thought that was a bad effect, so he wrote it in a very begrudging way.

[marsh garden]

i don't have any 1v1 experience

[merry arch]

depends a lot on how difficult of a guy you're fighting. most 1v1 fights are ending in 1-3 decisives in my experience.

[marsh garden]

i assume you might go for like, 2-3 depending on the opp's build

and yours

[bleak escarp]

You hope to do it once, more realistically you'd do it two or three times, with the first and maybe second aiming to inflict wound penalties that slant the fight more in your favour.

[south spade]

Oh right

Okay wound penalties actually make a lot more sense

With how harsh they are

[bleak escarp]

One-shotting someone is always the dream, but like. Y'know. "Don't expect your enemy to cooperate in the creation of your dream engagement."

[merry arch]

^

[south spade]

Right yeah

Interesting

This is not what I expected

It kinda rules tho

[merry arch]

3e combat whips

it's very awesome

[bleak hazel]

there are also builds that want to do lots of small decisives

poison, certain martial arts styles that exploit wound penalties

disease

[south spade]

@timber rover i think it was gunmetal sonata that had combat similar to this, where you built up to a big decisive attack rather than hitting someones hp from the start, right?

[bleak hazel]

Solar Archery, which focuses on using magic to add a lot of flat damage to your decisives so you can spam them independent of your init

[south spade]

Oooo

Thats funny

[timber rover]

Yeah

[bleak hazel]

but in general it's very plausible to be 3cm from death for an entire fight and then come out without a scratch on you

[south spade]

Its really interesting for me to have like

Seen you talk about the design of that

[bleak hazel]

(which is good because healing takes actual time, even with celestial medical magic you're on the floor for a day)

[south spade]

And know you played a lot of exalted

And now come back and like

Connect some dots

I do kinda get it tho, like, i dont dislike traditional HP personally

But this does have a much more…. Cinematic flow

Inherently

[bleak escarp]

There are some weirdnesses with 3e combat, it has its failure modes

but it very much has its success modes too

[south spade]

Oh im sure

It seems like

It would be pretty easy to get in a situation where you kinda just cant do anything

About ur intiative being bottomed out

[bleak hazel]

it can get a bit odd if you have one strong guy and one weak guy, because the enemy will happily slap the weak guy 10 init into crash and then use that init to fight the more dangerous opponent, but that does lead you to doing movie style "don't try and help me, it's too dangerous" scenes for your own good, which is kind of cute

generally if you're stuck in negative init forever with no prospect of getting anywhere you're not going to live super long because it means you can't consistently land hits anyway

and you reset to +3 after three turns of being on the floor, which means beating up on a downed target is of limited use if there's anything else you could be doing

the most common "whoops" mode of the combat itself rather than specific mechanics within that broader system is probably that if everyone's withering damage resistance gets really high it slows down tons

you drain all your init on a decisive and then everyone's scratching at each other and can't build up any more

newer books have better soak-buster tools in them to deal with that, but if you've got a whole party of giant monster men with 20 Soak there will be issues

[south spade]

Yeah okY that makes sense

And tbh like

Is just generally a problem in systems where DR of any kind is really easy to get

See high level PF1e where fights could get

Really fucking slow

Because everyone has DR20 Null

[mighty rover]

https://bsky.app/profile/toskarin.bsky.social/post/3mmurszomw224

Rin Kaenbyou Furioso (@toskarin.bsky.social)

DECAPITATOR UL-WARGAR, WHO WILL NOT BE APPEARING AFTER THIS STORY: That may be true, Cimmerian, but how can we be certain?

CONAN, ATOP A KILLED SERPENT: I begin my first proposition: the world is everything that is the case. The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

Bluesky · May 28, 2026, 12:38 AM

[south spade]

Amused by the idea of a character like Conan who is also like

A really compelling speaker and philosopher on the side

[mighty rover]

that's exalted!!!!

[south spade]

Hey also

Uh

Is rimworlding people a viable tactic in this

Where you kidnap someone and then indoctrinate them to believe the specific thing you need them to

Because everything ive seen aboit the social system implies this would be very effective

[merry arch]

yes but i think it goes against the spirit of how the social systems are meant to be played

[marsh garden]

that is conan, unless that's what you meant

and yeah that's very, very Exalted

[south spade]

No im actually v unfamiliar with conan

[marsh garden]

Conan fits easily as a solar or a wandering dragon-blood

ah, in that case

Conan the Barbarian is not "a barbarian" in d&d terms

[south spade]

Other than having seen some clips of the movie

Where hes Arnold

[marsh garden]

because "a d&d barbarian" is conan as written by Gary Gygax

i.e. a dumbass fascist asshole

[bleak hazel]

it is possible to kidnap and indoctrinate people but kidnapping and attempting to indoctrinate someone is a great reason for them to develop a major or defining intimacy of "you should go fuck yourself, you cruel bastard" of their own accord

[marsh garden]

Conan was always this extraordinarily canny warrior-philosopher

[bleak hazel]

which will result in your techniques only being effective if you can somehow drain them of all willpower and batter them relentlessly with mind-warping magics

in which case sure, you are now running Room 101

[marsh garden]

the "barbarian" descriptor was like, a way to present him in contrast with the hedonistic arrogance of declining or fallen imperial superpowers

[south spade]

Yeah youve now started just There Is No War - ing people

[bleak hazel]

I once sealed a demon into a magic sword with the intent of convincing it to be chill over time but frankly that was too much work

now that 2CD just lives in the department of secrets vault, in his sword

[mighty rover]

iconic

[bleak hazel]

probably still pissed at me

[mighty rover]

what could go wrong

[south spade]

LMAO

[bleak hazel]

classic Sidereal activities

shouldn't have been forming a cult and using them to paint eyes of blessed blood on the doors of all the town priests as part of a ritual to hold its form in Creation

[buoyant summit]

-# What???

[bleak hazel]

can't remember what the demon's deal was beyond that, this was many years ago in 2e, which was Bad Exalted

[buoyant summit]

What was this demon... like

By chance

pay no attention to the diabolist secrets with access to that vault

[bleak hazel]

and the only thing you could do in the 2e social system was batter people with social influence until they ran out of willpower and you could remould them at your will

3e one way better

[bleak escarp]

John Morke was a petty man.

And not actually like

good at writing

[bleak hazel]

fucked if I know

midboss-shaped

[buoyant summit]

Oh I read Core, I gathered that at least XD

[bleak hazel]

game disintegrated shortly after that because playing 2e was suffering and we were all idiot teenagers, it only lasted a few weeks

anyway in the 3e system that would likely be too much work (actual) rather than too much work (game dead)

[south spade]

So quick q

Other than “robot jesus” what is the pitch for alchemicals

[buoyant summit]

Do You Want To Be The Worker From Soviet Art

While Also Still Getting Into Anime Fights

[south spade]

Can i be the homoerotic workers from chinese communist art?

[buoyant summit]

That is my unironic pitch because I think Alchemicals rock

YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[south spade]

Lmao

Love that i dont even need to provide an example

[prisma sun]

Alchemicals are largely if you want to play Exalted as a Cyberpunk game, because while they can show up in the Exalted setting, 99% of their hooks and lore assume they are playing in an entirely different setting sectioned off from the main one.

[buoyant summit]

True

[dense verge]

from what i gather the setting alchs have siloed off leans more into being a hero of and/or for the people rather than god-kinging it up

[prisma sun]

You are in general more of a government asset that is deployed by your State is my understanding

[south spade]

Hmmm okay

David is definitely more of a solar then

(Guy im making as a test character)

I would wanna make a liminal as an OC but god hates me

[prisma sun]

Liminals will probably be cool as hell in 4 years when they have a book

[tepid flower]

3e definitely makes it more viable to not play in Autochthonia, though

There are Alchemicals in Creation if you want to be one

[prisma sun]

Oh yeah but then you do have to ignore like

ALL of the book

[tepid flower]

It's doubling as a setting book for Autochthonia in the same way the Sidereal book does so for Yu-Shan

But they're not required to be linked, unlike in 2e

[prisma sun]

Well they weren't required in 2e either with the Locust crusade

[dense verge]

you kind of have to fly by vibes if you deploy an alch in creation

[south spade]

HOW MANY SQUIDWARDS SETTINGS ARE THERE

[dense verge]

either you woke up in an empty fallout vault or you got isekai'd to creation from auto somehow

[prisma sun]

If you wanna be technical, 5

Really it's more like 2 with 1 having 3 other worlds you can fuck about in

[tepid flower]

Creation, Heaven, Autochthonia, Malfeas, the Underworld... oh, technically the Wyld too but we don't have Raksha rules yet

(And probably won't get them, I'd say)

[dense verge]

autochthonia is the one that's pretty hard in being siloed off from the rest

[tepid flower]

Mhm. Abyssals/Infernals/Sidereals are "supposed" to spend time in both Creation and the Underworld/Malfeas/Heaven.

But "Sidereal ronin who hates Heavenly Politics" is a classic archetype for a reason.

3e does do a lot to make the Underworld actually... an interesting place to hang out?

Compared to 2e. Which is great for Abyssals.

[south spade]

Oh you can play traitor sidereals?

[tepid flower]

You can play ronins who just don't want to work for Heaven

Or actual traitors who threw-in with Rakan Thulio and the Getimians

[prisma sun]

There is only 1-5 "traitor" sids at any moment

[tepid flower]

Mhm, because there really aren't very many Sidereals at all at any one time

[prisma sun]

Everyone not working under Heaven is either Not Hired Yet or Stubbornly Refusing To Be Hired

[mighty rover]

and by complete coincidence, they're all in your player group

[prisma sun]

Yeah

Rakan Thulio is able to propegate his war in Heaven due to having Player Characters on his side

[south spade]

Yeah i guess i just didnt consider ronin sidereals but like

I guess the gods cant unexalt u huh

[dense verge]

i've said it before but im a fan of raising the number of sidereals to like, 300, because running out of undefined sidereals is a concern if you go broad enough

[south spade]

… how many are there normally

[spiral cosmos]

Exactly 100 at most

I think this is an asset to the splat

[tepid flower]

Sidereals are Chosen way in advance too, so there's years of "lag" between when a new Sidereal is Chosen and when they're actually old enough to Exalt and trained enough to do the job

[bleak hazel]

I have occasionally wished there was 150 of them

[tepid flower]

They are explicitly overworked to a massive degree because of this

[bleak hazel]

but 100 is a nice round number and "Fivescore Fellowship" is a cool title

[south spade]

Mhm

Thats a really low number but at the same time

[prisma sun]

Sometimes I feel like there's 100 because Fivescore Fellowship sounds rad

[bleak hazel]

it is important that the number of Sids stays generally within a plausible estimate of the Dunbar Number because the point is that they all know one another

[south spade]

Its not like they try to say “everyones games are canon to each other”

I dont think theres

Fuckin

Society play

Lmao

[bleak hazel]

despite all the political feuding they are probably the tightest-knit group of Exalted around besides maybe some of the more insular DB clans

[spiral cosmos]

Yes

That is why I am so big on the 100 number

It does meaningfully dictate the nature of the Sidereal Host that there's so few of you and you're all stuck with each other

[south spade]

I think you are only likely to run out if you play like

A LOT of exalted

And sidereals come up a lot

Because i assume theres less than 30 defined sidereals

[bleak hazel]

a game I was in once ran out of purplesids but only in a silly way where we visited the Violet Bier a couple of times and named a bunch of funny background characters

[prisma sun]

Actually between named Sids and player Sids I do think we meaningfully hit about 75% of the host

[south spade]

Which leaves 70ish

[bleak hazel]

so we just shuffled one of those out

[prisma sun]

on the server

[fierce star]

This is why "I had my pay docked because I threw a birthday party for a coworker" "Which coworker" "Chejop Kejak......" can be canon to me

[south spade]

Oh are you doing a west marches thing

[dense verge]

i think there's like 50 sids with writeups in canon? but on the other hand you can obliterate the ones you dont use in your game

[spiral cosmos]

No

We have named around 50, though

[prisma sun]

I was running a play by post one yeah

[south spade]

Because i think that also falls under my “play a lot of exalted”

[spiral cosmos]

I had an exact list, at one point

[south spade]

:p

[prisma sun]

For the record I have been shaking Speaker daily to get him to post

[bleak hazel]

also in terms of "influence on creation", they are assisted significantly by having a giant powerbase and a lot of backup

most Destiny Problems are not sid-tier

[south spade]

Do ronin count against the 100

And traitors

[bleak hazel]

(now go negotiate over every bit of that backup)

[fierce star]

Yes

[south spade]

Damn

[bleak hazel]

yeah, there just are very very few of those

[south spade]

Makes sense

[spiral cosmos]

At risk of being a little glib, I literally wrote the book about this, and only found at the end of development with 50+ Sidereals named that it was like, okay, maybe if we added another 10 it would be a problem, but mostly that was just in the context of how thoroughly the high end of the Sidereal Host has been defined

[tepid flower]

Yup! So technically there are 99, because the immortal Rakan Thulio has been hogging his spot basically forever

[south spade]

Very few people are willing to scorn the system that gives them unparalleled control over the destiny of the universe and such

[dense verge]

oh its still pinned in another server

[spiral cosmos]

It's a little behind

[bleak hazel]

the fun reward of beating him up is that you get to offload 1/99 of your workload once his reincarnation is back

[spiral cosmos]

I found one or two more, just kinda snuck in to another book, I think

[dense verge]

aha

[spiral cosmos]

Which was mildly annoying

[fierce star]

There's at least one canon where the fivescore fellowship has been at -1 Secrets since halfway through the First Age because one of them got caught on the wrong side of the Seal of Eight Divinities, which is osmething I still think is fun

[south spade]

Guys who want to kill him but not for any moral reasons

Theyre just understaffed

And need a new intern

[prisma sun]

You know who I realized is like

a really good anime rep for Sids

[bleak hazel]

the big part is not necessarily the power, it's that Sids are cursed such that only other sids, a few doomoid exalts and the gods of the bureau of destiny can remember them

[dense verge]

yeah i tend to go a bit broad with cast size so i just get a bit antsy seeing the size of unpainted canvas. it SHOULD be small though. like, a large marching band in terms of scale.

[prisma sun]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKMJ6cPFIIM

[bleak hazel]

so if you don't join you are hopelessly alone for your entire life because if you show your real self to anyone ever rather than playing a stock character for them they will forget you completely

[south spade]

Sidereals are also presumably like

[prisma sun]

Nanami is Prime Sid

[south spade]

Chosen

More specifically

[spiral cosmos]

They are Chosen

[south spade]

Than like

Solars

[spiral cosmos]

If there's one thing I regret not being able to do with Agents, I'm lying because there's a few, but one of them is not being able to better define out the last remaining elders of the Bronze and Gold Faction

Because I know who they are and mention them but there just wasn't room to give them QCs

[bleak hazel]

all those Elders and you're sad you didn't have more?

[spiral cosmos]

Yes

[bleak hazel]

we're spoiled

[spiral cosmos]

Yes I am

I wanted to flesh out Drowning Opal, Midnight Tiger Killer, Howl of the Mountain, and give Ayesha a sort of left hand to Kijamano's right

[dense verge]

i do like seeing weird sidereal elders

[spiral cosmos]

Technically, Strike-the-Heart was never due for a QC

[velvet raft]

Had our first big magic combat of exmortalgame, lots of moving parts and we're still getting used to our characters so we got through exactly one (1) complete round

[spiral cosmos]

But I worked him in

[velvet raft]

But it was a very interesting round

[spiral cosmos]

I felt like he really needed to be there as the designated guy who is in charge of hunting Gets

[bleak hazel]

At least there's room for at least a couple homebrew ones because my Sid's freak previous incarnation had to hog a slot until 15 years back or so (at least in my game)

[spiral cosmos]

at some point if people want I'll probably write a post talking about it

[bleak hazel]

I was unaware MTK was that old

although as far as I know they're mentioned like, once in sidbook

[spiral cosmos]

Real shit, I don't think MTK was ever written to be a coherent character

They show up as having a smuggler partner, and chair the convention on the north

I think it was done basically without thought, the same as putting the stupid white boy Shepherd of the North Star in charge of the Convention on the South instead of Nazri

[bleak hazel]

you can't be giving Shep jobs like that

(at least not the golden retriever Shep in most of the comics)

[spiral cosmos]

Nazri was always the smart choice to bring back as a controlled opposition stupid centrist, honestly

Give me elder Chuck Schumer

[dense verge]

YEAH

[spiral cosmos]

(I'm being glib with that statement too, but like, you get the idea)

[velvet raft]

Does Nazri have tulpas

[spiral cosmos]

a couple from Grieve who lives in his brain and advise him on policy

[south spade]

Oh hey

Nerds

I must plumb your emersonian minds

[velvet raft]

oh so literally schumer then

[velvet raft]

Who?

[south spade]

Does exalted have blood bending/hemokinesis

[spiral cosmos]

i'm kind of morbidly curious how people will receive Strike, honestly, because I kind of wrote him to be just... The actual worst person in the Fellowship?

But one whom there's some very compelling reasons to get close to

[fierce star]

Several sorcery/necromancy spells

[bleak hazel]

Blood Lash is a sorcery spell that gives you roughly the bloodbending capabilities of that one demon from early Frieren

[south spade]

[bleak hazel]

grabbing people's blood and yanking it around inside them less so but I'm sure you could reflavour the spell that does that to someone's skeleton very easily

also there's a giant demon who is an entire moon made of blood

she is not chill

but you can't bend her unless you ask very nicely

[prisma sun]

I do love the Skeleton Spell from High School Parkour Ninja Scout

[bleak hazel]

based on what you've already said I think there is a whole hall of mirrors full of all the worst people in the fellowship

amazing that Anys Syn, Jane Shonen, appears to be shaping up as one of the relatively nice and stable ones

[dense verge]

she just wants a good fight

[spiral cosmos]

Anys Syn has Spiderman morals with the big glowing red hole around kung fu

[spiral cosmos]

I tried to make him clearly the worst, being fully candid, but that is by my standards

[prisma sun]

what does this mean

[spiral cosmos]

Dysfunctional emphasis on personal responsibility in moral judgments

[south spade]

Oh so to hit is always dex….

Unless theres charms that make it other things?

[prisma sun]

Unless you have a charm

[south spade]

Okay yeah

[prisma sun]

There's many

[south spade]

Not unexpected

[velvet raft]

Most splats have ways to key strength to it

[prisma sun]

Most of them are Strength For Big Weapons

[velvet raft]

Not solars or deebs, tragically

[south spade]

Idk how to describe it but like

[prisma sun]

Sometimes it's Charisma or Manipulation or Intelligence

[south spade]

This game feels weirdly familiar from the world of third party PF1E content

Idk how to describe it

Its just an energy

I think it also has to do with the vast breadth of bullshit of varying quality available

[spiral cosmos]

I may as well just explain what I mean: Strike is closest thing the Bureau of Destiny has to Homelander. He is a Sidereal supremacist who believes all other beings are inferior, for they are truly the most divine. He is like, a cop's cop, the big wetworks guy of the Division of Endings who runs their black ops, has his own terrifying little network of people under his thumb including spirits he can do some absolutely awful shit to

He is also Rakan Thulio's former apprentice

And for no reason in particular totally not cuddled gay devotion he is deeply obsessed with the concept of personal loyalty and has tried for centuries to put his old mentor in the grave

[south spade]

Also wow firewands really are judr

Just

Guns but we didnt want to call them guns

Huh

[dense verge]

oh strike sounds awful, i love him

[bleak hazel]

"guns but without giving PCs the brainworm of inventing the AK, because the tech caps there" is the reason I've heard there

[south spade]

Oh withering attacks steal initiative

[bleak hazel]

which is highly early-2000-RPG

[south spade]

I didnt realize that from the early description

[bleak hazel]

oh I cannot wait to work with this man, this sounds great

[spiral cosmos]

If you are his guy (gender neutral) he will never betray you. He is in your corner 200% and you are king shit of fuck mountain. He'll just ask you to commit horrible and totally necessary, trust him, acts in destiny's service

[dense verge]

"look we gotta burn down this orphanage. for destiny. look, none of these ones were going to exalt anyway."

[south spade]

If you ever say no do you cease to be his guy

[bleak hazel]

I guess having more Sid Elders than Lunar Elders lets you have slightly more specific kinds of weirdo because the only two Lunar elders that make me want to throw them into games like this are S.D and Feather Drenched, she in serious need of more combat charms

[spiral cosmos]

Loyalty... is a two way street!

[bleak hazel]

note to self: introduce this man in my hypothetical Alchs-in-YuShan robocop campaign when I am freed up enough to run it

what's the yu-shan equivalent of the Old Sludge Factory from every 80s action movie

[south spade]

Sidenote

[bleak hazel]

need a place to chase getimians through

[south spade]

Amused by the idea of an exalted pulling the toketsu trope of every fight happening in like

One of only 20 locations

Somehow

[bleak hazel]

there is a Sidereal charm that drags the fight to the budget preserving tokusatsu quarry

except it's a cave

[south spade]

Holy shit

[mighty rover]

whoah they have twenty this season?

[south spade]

No no

Twenty across all seasons

[mighty rover]

whew

[south spade]

Ive watched a lot of kamen and it is like

Really funny

[bleak hazel]

come with me, brave lunar, to the rent lowering gunshot cave

[south spade]

Seeing the same locations keep popping up that toei obviously just

Has the rights to film at

And then if you watch from a lot of different eras you can tell which ones they have lifetime rights for

[bleak hazel]

Infernals have a make my monster grow mechanic if you want a good boss for your group of five robot power rangers

(sids, instead, are apparently magical girls)

[south spade]

Oh are you supposed to build exalt npcs the same as PCs?

[mighty rover]

yesn't

the important ones are

[bleak hazel]

you can quick character them but it's only a moderate simplification, in general PCs and major NPCs are going to play by very similar rules

I find it's easiest to just make the exalt like a quick and dirty PC

[south spade]

Also lmao im laughing at the book specifying you cant botch join battle

Idk why its just really funny

[bleak hazel]

Exalted also puts a bit more emphasis than most modern TTRPGs on gameplay and story integration, even if it's obviously not total

major NPCs don't generally get a 4x powerup just becuase they have to fight four people, not unless there's a reason for it

[dense verge]

leave battle roll

[bleak hazel]

(like Ligier and the First and Forsaken Lion having explicit "I stab you once for each time you stab me" type mechanics)

[fierce star]

Technicolor Encroachment of Tomfoolery Style, a sidereal martial arts style that includes such charms as 'no one can deal lethal or aggravated damage' and 'everyone botches join battle'

[bleak hazel]

the fact that the modern raid bosses will absolutely run your party's collective fade even without Ultra-style extra turns is something of a testament to them

[fierce star]

form weapon: giant hammer, but only if it's inflatable and makes a squeaky noise

[south spade]

Yeah i assume you as the gm are supposed to make things in such a way where the story is set up to not allow just ganking the villain lmao

[bleak hazel]

if your players see that their villain is, say, the head of House Cathak and decide that they will immediately attempt to jump him 1v5 in the street you are encouraged to make that just a tiny bit tricky, yes

enemies can also practice jumpjutsu

[spiral cosmos]

There's a district coming

[fierce star]

the memetic example is a sidereal jumping out of your morning oatmeal and punching you into a duck

[bleak hazel]

don't duck punch your players unless they're ready for it or asking for it, it's mean, but yes, they can do that

[bleak hazel]

oh yeah it's got new Yu-Shan in it too, I forgot

best hypothetical book ever

[fierce star]

yeah, it's why I noted it's the memetic example, nto the best example. exalted has a lot of memes that are, frankly, not great ideas, but they are funny

[spiral cosmos]

one day it won't be Potential Book

[bleak hazel]

the duck punch is sufficiently difficult to pull off this edition that it's mostly for owning people who aren't other exalts, but man is it good for big stompy monsters and demons and so forth

behold, the living manse-chicken

[tulip folio]

OKay but now you are making me really tempted to name one of the Wanderer charms 'Budget-Preserving Quarry Invocation' 😛

[tulip folio]

Watching Power Rangers there is really funny as an Aussie as I keep pointing and going 'I RECOGNISE NEW ZEALAND!'

[south spade]

LMAO

[tulip folio]

'This is clearly original footage, not sentai because that's fucking Aukland'

[spiral cosmos]

I think the Green Lady could probably Duck Punch

High end Stealth and Pattern Spider Bite(?)

[tulip folio]

I'll admit, this is a lot of my mental image of the Green Lady being on several deathlord payrolls at the same time.

[bleak hazel]

the underworld also has many good targets for it due to being full of big gribblies, I suppose

[fierce star]

I should go re-read Last Days of Foxhound, it's been like a year or two

and it is a lovely inspirational comic for Exalted games.

[tulip folio]

I don't think I've ever had any of my sids get too squirrelly-brained in their RDs.

[spiral cosmos]

the green lady in 3e is possibly compromised by a Deathlord but she doesn't know if she is, or not

And the thought is kind of deeply distressing

[bleak hazel]

I hope she's got something cool going on herself because Old Green Lady was basically limited to "hey, you want a sid octuple agent on your side, Mr Abyssal?"

[spiral cosmos]

The Green Lady is, like, actually kind of insane. She has been for a long time and she's been able to work around it pretty well

It has not actually been an impediment to doing her job because she has learned to plan around it and cope

[spiral cosmos]

I think she came out very well fwiw

[bleak hazel]

eagerly awaiting Sids capable of things other than colossal intelligence failures

[spiral cosmos]

The Green Lady
(Sidereals, p. 46)
Once, there was a maiden who fell down a well. It was dark and frightful within, beyond the light of the sun or stars, and those who made their homes there didn’t much like her. She could have climbed out, but instead, she dove deep. What she saw there at the bottom, she came to adore, and never wanted to part from again. So the maiden stayed there until she drowned.

The woman who emerged baptized in dark water had become the Green Lady, Heaven’s eyes in the lands of the dead.

[bleak hazel]

even if I wouldn't want to be in a room with any of them

[tulip folio]

Fun fun. I know she kinda inspired my shot a a SMA>

Virescent Eyes of Division

There are few who can say they have fought a master of Albicant Sepulcher of Extinction and survived. There are even fewer who can claim they have stood within the tombs of the Neverborn themselves. The Green Lady is the only one among the living who can claim both. A relatively recently created Sidereal Martial Art, Virescent Eyes of Division is a rejection of the bleak focus on Oblivion over eternal pain that Albicant Sepulcher of Extinction preaches and a reinforcing of the true nature of Endings. 

It teaches that even as hope and love must one day fade, so must pain and heartbreak. It speaks of endings not merely as a cruel loss but as a step in an eternal cycle. A tyrant must be cast down so that people may be free and sickness must fade so that one can be well.

Students of Virescent Eyes of Division learn this style among sickhouses and unrest, watching the final moments of many and gaining an understanding that not even an ending is eternal. They must internalize that even the most painful wound will eventually fade and the greatest heartbreaks will be one day gone. They are taught bladework that can pick at the threads that hold together reality, hastening the ending of cruelty and bringing fated judgement to its targets early.

[south spade]

Man

You can really use exalted’s social rules to perfectly replicate the monks arc from season 2 of thunderbolt fantasy huh

INITIATIVE CAN GO NEGATIVE???

OH NOOOO

[merry arch]

correct. initiative crash

bad place to be

[south spade]

Lmao

[fierce star]

You do not wish to be there

[south spade]

“Yeah if it goes low enough, GM just kill that guy”

[merry arch]

that is usually the condition you desire to eliminate all of/the majority of your opponents' health levels

[south spade]

So

Do you add the difference between you and your enemies initiative

Or is the enemy intiative irrelevant to decisive attacks

[bleak hazel]

no, you just roll yours

[merry arch]

enemy initiative is irrelevant

[bleak hazel]

if you're at 30 and they're at 30 and you both have 10 health levels each could plausibly kill the other

[merry arch]

decisives only use your initiative to roll for damage.

[south spade]

Oh boy thats

Sacry

Scary

[merry arch]

yes exalted 3e is very volatile with how much damage you can put on a guy at a given time. this is why soak is a very important stat that can also begin to ruin the pacing of combats at high enough values

[bleak hazel]

it's also good at keeping things tense unless you are just hugely outstatting a guy, because you can afford to let attacks land without dying but those nonlethal attacks have thresholds of Bad they can push you over that you want to avoid anyway

great system for duels

[south spade]

Do you still do the withering stuff when ur fighting like

Groups of people

[tulip folio]

That said: As a GM, it's important to be liberal with 'bystanders and trivial characters don't count'

[south spade]

Rather

[tulip folio]

To avoid 'behold, my init punching bag'

[bleak hazel]

sometimes you see someone put 12 motes into making a super withering attack and you go "you know what, I spend 0m on defenses and I hope the 5 init you get is worth it"

[south spade]

I know that some statblocks in this game represent like

A troop of mortals

[bleak hazel]

battlegroups take health damage from withering swings and don't move their init around

so they're hard to get init off of either

[south spade]

Okay that makes sense

[bleak hazel]

big meatsacks

[south spade]

Hmm

[fierce star]

do not let the party sorcerer summon a bunch of shitty demons for the express purpsoe of being initaitive batteries for his allies

this is a bad idea for multiple reasons both in and out of character

[bleak hazel]

a small BG of decent lads is a good way to do adds in a big fight

since BGs hit everyone they're next to/shooting at, so they'll apply constant light to moderate pressure to everyone and not feed a ton of init when they are killed

in moderation though, fighting only giant BGs is not particularly hard and takes forever

[south spade]

Yeah i assume attacking your allies for initiative is considered bad form the same way Sack of Ratsing is

Even if the system very technically allows it

[buoyant summit]

Ye

[clever steeple]

Yeah there's a sidebar outright disallowing it

[south spade]

Oh ball alright

Even if it wasnt i think that kinda behavior is very quickly stopped by “oh so you want NPCs to be able to do this too”
Obviously dont solve problems in game but that threat stops most exploits in my experience

[tulip folio]

...and now I'm imagining a charm that rolls an enemy into the battle purely for the sake of being a shitty init battery. XD

[bleak hazel]

in a happy coincidence, the group of enemies most likely to come looking for your PCs in a dramatic showdown is a handful of Exalts plus a supporting battlegroup for pressure, in the form of the Wyld Hunt

funny that that's one of the better ways to do The Big Fight

(just don't go too big because if everyone has 5 summoned demons and a familiar and a battlegroup you will be there all week)

[south spade]

Makes sense

[marsh garden]

(ronin is also like. not a term anymore, because it was literally just added to describe rogue sids for orientalism points)

[clever steeple]

For context

[fierce star]

they're called wandering stars now ro something like that iirc

[marsh garden]

i'm pretty sure they're just rogue sidereals

[south spade]

I mean on one hand i get it, on the other, ronin doesnt seem like

Un-apt

[buoyant summit]

...what the fuck

[fierce star]

the original head devs were

not great!

[buoyant summit]

'Charms don't 'do' anything, they are reflections of the actions of the Exalt'

Well

one

That's A Dirty Lie

two

The charm the backer apparently actually proposed would have followed that logic

[fierce star]

'charms don't exist' is oen of the coreisms I entirely ignore tbh

[marsh garden]

so the thing is that 1e exalted was, as i understand it, very careful about not using Exotic Foreigner Words to describe normal things for a while, and then it got to sids and just went full WEEABOO POWER [racial slur] MYSTIC ASIAN MONK with some of the terminology, where it tries to not use things that are both inaccurate and Exotic For Exoticism's Sake

[fierce star]

they can pry me yelling HEAVEN THUNDER HAMMER at the top of my lungs from my cold dead hands

[south spade]

“You need to build up 14 enemy 1s and 2s” is also

[marsh garden]

"Charms don't exist" makes me deeply sad, because it was one of the things that made Exalted like

[south spade]

Genuinely unhinged

As game design

[marsh garden]

distinct to me, before i got into it

it was one of the few concrete setting details i understood that seemed unique

now i'm kind of enamored with the whole setting as i know it, but

i still wish it didn't get flattened into You Just Have Powers Bro

[buoyant summit]

Sid and Alch charms are all diegetic, no?

[fierce star]

sid and alch are, yeah, no one else's are, by canon

[buoyant summit]

Sure, and I accept that Charms in other splats may not exist like

As those specific techniques

But

[bleak hazel]

I can't imagine the deebs don't have some books of Things Deebs Can Do in their big academies, or the wyld hunt doesn't know Solars occasionally pull swords made of sunlight from their anima banners so watch it

[buoyant summit]

Lunars ability to be a hybrid of animal and person feels like something very obviously that would be taught

[bleak hazel]

sometimes the effort put in to make the setting "unsolvable" in early 3e makes perfect sense, sometimes it feels more like "nobody in-universe is allowed to be smart"

[marsh garden]

DBT seems like it should be A Charm™, and literally everything deebs have should be documented as charms, yeah

[buoyant summit]

idk I guess this is me slamming against the distant idea that Exalted draws on cultivation fiction?

Cultivation requires

Techniques

Usually, at least

[prisma sun]

The thing for me with Solar and Lunar charms not existing diagetically is like

[buoyant summit]

idk I may be entirely offbase

[bleak hazel]

cultivation as a formalised internet writing genre rather than just different people pulling from the same classics is rather younger than Exalted as I understand it

[prisma sun]

Solars don't have diagetic technique names due to it basically being this

https://youtu.be/f84ciGBhK8o

[bleak hazel]

Exalted is more Jin Yong, which also has a bunch of flashy named techniques going on but is less about people ruthlessly optimising in the space of all possible technique-sets

[clever steeple]

Charms arenr diegetic read to me,as a newcomer, less as "nobody catalogued or named their shit" and more that the map isnt the territory

[fierce star]

The problem is that in the context of the evolution out of ex2, it wa smore or less part of the rejection of 'motonic sciences' o r'motonic physics'.

It's the reason that essence isn't real and motes don't exist, too

[south spade]

They do tho
Ive decided it :p

[bleak hazel]

well, essence is pretty clearly real, I have this diegetic MA charm called "Essence Redirection Technique"

it sure as fuck redirects that essence

[marsh garden]

i'm fine with Essence Level not being real and motes being loose-ish

[south spade]

Tbh i kinda am enamored with mechanics being diagetic

[marsh garden]

but i want motes to be understandable as like, a unit of power that you put in

whether or not people have diegetic mote counts that they have and/or can use is something i don't give a shit about

[south spade]

But also in this specfic case i want my characyers to scream technique names

[marsh garden]

but a First Age "unit of Essence" is ideal, and Charms being Charms and not just

generic fantasy superpowers?

[fierce star]

oh right MA charms are also real. I dunno if Evocations are?

[marsh garden]

is like

good

[mighty rover]

This feels right yeah

[south spade]

Or be like “you stupid fuck youll never get around my Impenetrable Mirror Wall”

Yojow

*yknow

It just feels right

Also it just feels v magic systemy to be like

“Oh yeah every exalt knows ox body technique”

[bleak hazel]

one thing that has at least stayed is that Exalts of all kinds learn to use their stuff in fairly discrete increments, which means their capabilities stay "lumpy" in a way that differentiates them from your classic superheroes and cultivators

[south spade]

“Its like the first thing you learn”

[bleak hazel]

you don't just get Stats Up, you have to learn specific gofastertechnique, and that won't just let you fly or dodge bullets or whatever once you're high enough level

that's a second charm

[spiral cosmos]

Elite ball knowledge

I love 3e combat. I am very good at it. I love the fiddly details and decision making, it is made for me

[bleak hazel]

likewise

[south spade]

Also
This is funny because as far as i can tell like

[bleak hazel]

the thing that personally gives me the biggest possible kick is when the fight's been going 5 rounds and my opponent suddenly realises they are out

[south spade]

Ronin is actually a completely valid term here

[bleak hazel]

but there are many other ways to scromble people satisfyingly

[south spade]

In the sense that it carries much of the samw implications in universe as in ours

[prisma sun]

Essence is definitely diagetic people just don't like

[south spade]

The only difference being that all sids have the same”master”

[prisma sun]

CALL it Essence

[bleak hazel]

in some ways an Ex3 duel is basically an iterative auction process, which I suppose partially explains why I adore it

[prisma sun]

and you don't have an Essence dot irl

[fierce star]

I feel like Autochthonia at least has to have some way to like. Track essence expenditure at the macro level.

[south spade]

Yeah the only level that qould feel not diagetic is like

Xp and dots

[fierce star]

If only because they have literal Essence Power PLants for metropoli.

[dense verge]

combat performs best when in an ideal 1v1 and gets wobblier the further complicating factors are introduced as i understand it

[bleak hazel]

I think there's a sweet spot at about the 2v2 or 3v3 point where you're covering each other and using stuff in combination and actually using the movement system

[spiral cosmos]

I think rogue Sidereal gets the idea across a lot better

[bleak hazel]

but the duels are pretty sweet

[spiral cosmos]

You're not a masterless dude you're Jason Bourne

If ronin were to apply anywhere itd be to rogue Abyssals

[south spade]

Fair

[bleak hazel]

it also lets you have a "convention on rogue assets" which sounds cool and sinister

[prisma sun]

I feel likeeeeeeeeee

John Wick more than Jason Bourne? Idk

[marsh garden]

eh

they're the same thing

[prisma sun]

I thought Jason Bourne's whole thing was that he was actively fighting the government all the time

[marsh garden]

he's also just john wicking it

[bleak hazel]

for the first film at least he's spending most of his time going "what the fuck is going on"

[south spade]

To be fair in the majority of john wick movies hes fighting the assassin org

[marsh garden]

but yeah no like borb said sids aren't Masterless Knights

[clever steeple]

Me when I think about bullying the fuckboy prince of earth but I check his stat screen and see that they're only 3 exp from leveling up to Essence 2

[marsh garden]

they're salaried secret police

[south spade]

Mhm

I suppose I See It

[marsh garden]

if you quit you're not A Romantic Warrior With No Master

abyssals play into European knight tropes instead, and so also don't fit, but they would

[bleak hazel]

the closest thing to a diegetic essence level as I see it is that people are going to notice when you finally get stronk enough to learn something like an SMA capstone, and even that's going to vary a decent bit in-universe

[marsh garden]

they're Deathknights, they follow an explicit code of "chivalry" and swear their allegiance to lords

[mighty rover]

Abyssal who wears this

[bleak hazel]

"oh, he's mastered Diamond Tapdance of Placeholding Form" does tell you something about this fellow's overall level of juice

[marsh garden]

and masterless abyssals are called knights-errant

and you could play into the Underworld's waters of death and rebirth bullshit in a like, fromsoft-ass aesthetically buddhist way and make them samurai, but that would go back to the "we try to use our own words or english terms instead of exotic orientalist words"

[clever steeple]

I also think calling any other exalted "ronin" would be weird considering we have a literal Shogunate

[spiral cosmos]

da adjustment bureau

[marsh garden]

MiniTruth :)

[spiral cosmos]

ur magical James Bond

[fierce star]

I am reminded that they made Ledaal Kes into !James Bond in the modern day Shard back in ex2

[coral wraith]

dont worry Rhi, my first E2 charm is Cash-and-Murder Games c:

[buoyant summit]

eye twitch

[buoyant summit]

Abyssals also have some secondary nautical associations

The River Lethe and all that

One of their epithets as a splat is, iwrc, the Mariners

after Deathknights and Riders

[coral wraith]

C:

[fierce star]

(abyssal sail is also really fun)

you get to drown ghosts

[south spade]

Oh since being able to summon guys was mentipned

Is being a summoner an actually valid playstyle

[fierce star]

Yesn't. Summoning isn't really something you do inc ombat, but 'I spent two weeks preparing a large quantity of Demons.G o my minions! go and save the children!' is valid.

[spiral cosmos]

not sure ive heard that before

[south spade]

Thank you for “go and save the children”

[buoyant summit]

am I stupid?

I may be stupid, chat

[south spade]

No ur just silly

Important distinction

[buoyant summit]

I did get to pull out, in the Abyssals game I'm in

"For all of the talk of our kind as riders, I seem to be on a fucking boat more often than not."

[south spade]

u need to get a dolphin mount

obv

[fierce star]

This is important because Demons, in exalted, are not like,objecitvley evil or anything, they're just Weird People.

[south spade]

yeag theyre alien

[fierce star]

as far as summoning them, it's less 'path to damnation' and more 'I sure do love my sapient toolbox'

[south spade]

theyre the spawn of the twisted primordials right

[fierce star]

the Yozis yeah, the ones that lost the war

[south spade]

do the yozi still like

exist

[fierce star]

Yes!

the neverborn are the ones who died. They also stil lexist and they're making it everyone else's problem.

'neverborn' is a state of bieng, yozi verses primordial is more a political stance

(there are acutal metaphysical differences but it's based on if you got sewn up inside your king or not)

[marsh garden]

you might be thinking of the Mariner of the Final Shore, usually shortened as just the Mariner, who's one of the new abyssal iconics

and uh

not very iconic

lmao

[prisma sun]

The Yozis are the losers who didn't die, but were instead flensed alive and turned inside out to serve as their own prisons

[marsh garden]

"yozi" is actually presented as also a state of being

something metaphysically distinct from "a Primordial"

[fierce star]

old data, then, apologies

[prisma sun]

Does 3e even say where new gods come from

[marsh garden]

i think it does, yeah

that they can manifest, ascend, or be birthed the mortal way

[buoyant summit]

I don't know why I didn't expect that two Gods could make a baby in Exalted

But

I didn't

XD

[marsh garden]

even a god and a mortal, i think?

i think it can make a full god, not just god-blooded

could be wrong on that though

[bleak hazel]

Adorjan had kids with a Solar, which were smaller, differently insane storms

[buoyant summit]

...

[bleak hazel]

(at least last I checked, might be a couple of versions of that myth)

[buoyant summit]

of course a Solar fucked the sentient tornado

[wise ocean]

you can't lower rent there since it's outside of the world, it's the cave where the gunshots are no longer rent-lowering. complete absence of effect on property values cave

[wise ocean]

in one of my vague graves backstory doodles, one of his fellow deathknights calls him weird (in more suitably exalted terms) for walking everywhere. he replies that he gets to see more of the world this way and it isn't like he's going to be dying any time soon.

[marsh garden]

okay but would you not also

[wise ocean]

excellent. looking forward to this

[marsh garden]

hell, a sid can probably even booty call adorjan

[coral wraith]

Adorjan is the only Yozi that can take on a humanoid shape

So. You know.

[buoyant summit]

I hate that I find this charming

Something about Graves

[spiral cosmos]

perhaps most importantly for the green lady, she has anime-ass charm combo names

White Secret Art: Midnight Sun (22m, 1wp; Simple; Instant; Decisive-only): Make a decisive surprise attack against an enemy with Initiative at least five lower than hers, doubling 10s on the damage roll. Successes over the target’s Guile add extra damage dice, maximum 7. If she deals 3+ damage, the target must roll to resist white sun fever (Sidereals, p. 336) with +2 virulence and morbidity and a −2 success penalty, even if they would otherwise normally not be able to contract it. On success, he’s infected but automatically succeeds his first roll against its morbidity. He loses (his roll’s 1s and 2s + 7) Initative, and (1s and 2s) motes, or Willpower if he’s out of motes. If crashed, he contracts the disease at Major Intensity instead.

[wise ocean]

one of the things I have to balance with graves is that he's an unbelievable freak but also genuinely quite charming to people in the way of a thing with impossible personal gravity

it's the sheer self-assurance, mostly. the way you get sucked into the orbit of someone who's completely convinced he's ri- ooh hold on

[marsh garden]

ah, i see, he's donald trump with a heaven-cleaving cut

[wise ocean]

get that evil out of here, away, away

[limpid badge]

Honestly could be bloody hand needling at him from her skullhorse. That’s the thought in my head.

[wise ocean]

very true

also funny if she goes ahead and she's carousing in a tavern or whatever later on that evening

he walks in

nods at her cheerily

walks out the other end at the exit

and by the next town she's the one who has to catch up despite having a horse, because he Just Keeps Walking

this, too, is a lesson etc

[south spade]

hey so

was uh

was scrollin

through the table of contents

are there charms to be good at sex

[marsh garden]

not explicitly outside of solars

core was core

there's plenty of implicit stuff, though

[south spade]

MY SPECIASL MOVE

MY SPECIAL FUCK MOVE

[limpid badge]

Yeah

[marsh garden]

just handled rather more tastefully than "you anime judgment cut and then your partner cums like you're in fucking shokugeki no soma"

[limpid badge]

I love the sid ones

The sid fucking charms are great

[bleak hazel]

Sids have one charm to be really good at aftercare and one charm to be really bad at it

[south spade]

celestial bliss trick is like

the funniest imagineable name

for this ability

let me show you my cool trick

[wise ocean]

there's not just charms to be good at sex, there's a martial art entirely based around being good at sex that you can use to transform into a bloodborne monster

[south spade]

wh

what

not being a prude to be clear

this rules

just NOT what i expected

when i was told it was horny

celestial bliss trick was not on my mind

[marsh garden]

dreaming pearl courtesan is a pretty normal martial art mechanically i'm pretty sure

other than the capstone

[wise ocean]

oh no I had the exact same reaction a while back because I was so exalted combat brained I kind of forgot that they could mechanicize the horny too

[south spade]

i GOTTA read that 2e book man

[bleak hazel]

CBT is an outlier because it used to be a Sidereal charm for being an awful Jame Bond and turning enemy agents with your magic dick but then they gave it to Solars and removed the commentary that comes from being in the Sid bad powers for bad people tree

[buoyant summit]

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...

<XD

[bleak hazel]

so now it's Glorious Solar Penis

[south spade]

white wolf in general i was not expecting to be so horny

i started with hunter whichi is

an extremely unhorny series

[buoyant summit]

Wh-

[south spade]

but recently i read vtm5

where if your humanity is too low your dick stops working

a real mechanic

[buoyant summit]

That's

interesting

(read: kind of dumb, imo)

[south spade]

also mechanics for faking it

[buoyant summit]

'Ah yes my descent into animalistic lusts for flesh and blood makes me less horny'

[marsh garden]

was it in soc in older editions?

[south spade]

well

it more makes you a psychopath uninterested in human desires

its more descent into lizardbrain

in 5v

at least

[wise ocean]

I FUCKING LOVE SUNNY ROCKS AND HUMAN FLESH - believe it or not, a good few sewer nossies

but not actually sunny. you get the deal

[bleak hazel]

It was a Resplendency in the constellation attached to Socialise, because old sids were incredibly fiddly

[buoyant summit]

I possess a counterargument to that as well, and it's going to sound pithy, but I mean it genuinely

[marsh garden]

lizardbrain is so much sex though

[buoyant summit]

where the fuck do the authors think the phrase 'fuck like animals' comes from?

[marsh garden]

oh right, resplendent destinies were like

entire trees

[south spade]

yeah idk

[marsh garden]

forgot about that

[south spade]

also god

learning charms are in the back of the book

oughg

[buoyant summit]

Sorry, I'm not trying to take you to task for White Wolf's decisions

just

I am

my flabbers

[south spade]

thats like the part im most excited for

[buoyant summit]

they are gasted

[south spade]

no for sure

it's p funny

so what i think they were getting at is

lower humanity makes you more of a vampire

and vampires being unable to normal fuck is a thing

in some stuff

it is like

becoming unable to fuck

[fierce star]

gazellecarp mentioned!

[south spade]

the uh

it doesnt just make you asexual lmao

[fierce star]

I should work on my MAs more

[wise ocean]

Ontologically Incapable Of Knowing What Sex Is

this, too, is a shaping effect and probably a charm somewhere

[south spade]

sidreal pointing at you

forget how to have sex

oh hey

because this doeszn't have a ton of guns

do you actually get defense against ranged attacks

[chilly sluice]

You defend as normal against ranged attacks

[bleak hazel]

By default you can both parry and dodge them, yes

It's just generally assumed you're good enough to block a fireball with your sword

[south spade]

YOU CAN USE PARRY ON RANGED ATTACKS

[wise ocean]

what kind of wuxia protag are you if you can't chop a bullet out of the air

[south spade]

so

is the difference between parry and dodge just, charms that interact with such

[chilly sluice]

Yes

[fierce star]

some attackare unparryable/undodgeable

*atatcks

specific spells or charm-enhanced htings

[wise ocean]

parry gets boosted by equipment, dodge does not, so parry will usually be ~1 tick higher resting

[chilly sluice]

Also some charms make stuff unblockable or undodgeable

[south spade]

oh actually it looks like parrying doesnt care about armor also

seems like parry is generally the better option?

[wise ocean]

yep, this is why unblockable is more common than undodgeable because it really fucks people

[south spade]

unless you are incapable of using it like an archer

[chilly sluice]

Nope, its based on Melee/Brawl, or MA

[bleak hazel]

Dodge abilities will often have slightly stronger charms and a lot more "you missed, fuck you" effects

[wise ocean]

the average character in exalted has a much higher parry than their dodge

[tulip folio]

I still have fun referring to motonic/motic science as an in-universe thing, it's just not 'doing game mechanics'.

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

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

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

[bleak hazel]

So dodge is for if you're a dedicated evasion enjoyer and want to taunt people to death on your 40 dodge charms

[marsh garden]

dodge trees are also very fun

[south spade]

interesting

[chilly sluice]

Dodge is a fun one to go heavy on

[bleak hazel]

or if you're an archer or Eva based martial artist

[wise ocean]

become a trve freak. 5/5, 7/6 or bust

[marsh garden]

sid dodge is about putting your buddies into protective custody and also dancing

[south spade]

part of me wants to make sans undertale

[tulip folio]

I like rogue because it makes me think Rogue Planets, planets that are unconnected to the gravity of a sun.

[south spade]

full dodge, never take ox body

[marsh garden]

infernal dodge sends people to the shadow realm

and abyssal dodge is about ragebaiting people so hard they die

[chilly sluice]

You can do that

[marsh garden]

and then being inside their walls lungs

[fierce star]

I'd probably take at least one ox-body but I subscribe to the defense onion

and like to have at least three layers covered

[south spade]

I DONT BLOCK
I DONT TAKE OX BODY
I DONT HAVE SOAK
IF IM ATTACKED I DODGE IT, AND IF I DONT I DIE

[wise ocean]

at least one ox-body becomes mandatory at e3+

before that you can get away with just killing them harder

[chilly sluice]

Well there are also some ways to make it so even when you do get hit, you didn't 😛

[limpid badge]

BE COOL. INVEST IN SOAK. BY RAGE RECAST BY FURY DRIVEN BY AGONY EMPOWERED

[tepid flower]

Or if you did die, you don't stay dead (we love Immortal Malevolence)

[dense verge]

imagine five ox bodies

[limpid badge]

five ox-bodies. five scar-writ shield sagas.

[south spade]

God i just watched that ratatouille scene again

That guy is so fucking evil

Palpatine out here giving micheline stars

[limpid badge]

i will make my infernal into Malfeas’ undying babygirl.

[fierce star]

"oops I accidentally a resting soak of 22"

"tee hee"

wait GM waht are you doing with that baseball bat

[wise ocean]

did that for my mhm stylist

[fierce star]

OH NO MY KNEECAPS

[wise ocean]

parry 7, soak 23, dodge -4

[fierce star]

Ash 🤝 ID
having MHM stylists with more soak than god

[spiral cosmos]

stephen hawking vocalizer voice i am inside your lungs

[fierce star]

there's a reason Mr. X is on the inspo sheet for mine lmao

[wise ocean]

if I get hit by a single unblockable I explode and die instantly

fortunately: wings 5

[south spade]

Presumably there arw ways to like

Pierce

Soak

Right

[fierce star]

yes

[tulip folio]

I feel like Jade might need more soak as a combat primary character. She's Soak...5. 8 with a charm 😛

[fierce star]

moreso in later exalt types

Jade's a sidereal she's not allowed to Soak

[chilly sluice]

There are, yes

Overwhelm being the main one

[marsh garden]

sids can get plenty of soak lmao

[chilly sluice]

But there's also other Soak reducing or ignoring

[marsh garden]

even without the cheese

[tulip folio]

To be fair, she's got a lot of room for increase. She's right now running Stamina 3 + Mundane Light Armour.

[wise ocean]

where is your SILKEN ARMOR my child. embrace the 4*

[marsh garden]

you can get 20 pretty easily

[tulip folio]

...oh wait, I could increase that by going to mundane medium. Her martial art allows medium.

That's 8 soak

And at some point she might pick up some artifact armour

[marsh garden]

and there are a ton of form charms that grant 4-6 soak, and the Soak Rock, and some scattered scenelongs

[spiral cosmos]

Sidereal presence has some soak tech in addition to resistance

But their best soak path is being unarmed

Max out Strength, nab Burn Life, use Drowning Maiden Form

oh, excuse me the brawl form isn't quite as good for it as I thought

just +5 soak

still, though

[marsh garden]

it's just a standard 5 like a bunch of others, but that's still 5

and burn life is 6-10

[spiral cosmos]

The key is it lets you derive Strength soak yeah

Stamina dump works okay in that context

Ah, right, the +Strength soak was unarmored for the Form and for Burn Life

Good ol +11 soak at e1

[clever steeple]

There arent Charms, but there is a Charm(specifically for that)

[tulip folio]

Burn life would be good to pick up, yeah. She's got good athletics.

[limpid badge]

i love arby's defense stats

i love making infernals

[spiral cosmos]

hueh

[south spade]

…

[clever steeple]

Girly is a walll

[south spade]

13 seems like a lot

[fierce star]

It's decent

like, for a soakbeast

I accidentally made an infernal who's resting naked soak was like. 22 at chargen?

that's a bit much though

at tha tpiont your ST is legally allowed to beat your kneecaps with a baseball bat

[dense verge]

15 is where you start seeing dimishing returns right? i think i remember seeing the breakpoints around somewhere

[tulip folio]

15 is where basicly nobody's 'resting' damage will rise above.

They can boost with charms, of course.

But it's the point where everything that's not actively pushing to hit like a truck bounces

[prisma sun]

I believe King Hu sat at a comfortable 16 soak in warform

[south spade]

WARFORM? M

[marsh garden]

i've got too many wyld mutations i want to slap onto PCs

there's some really neat shit

[chilly sluice]

Lunars have those

[prisma sun]

Lunars have a generic charm available to basically everyone to assume a hybrid form

[tulip folio]

My other sid has a resting soak of 10, 15 with form up but she's also half-jadeborn and is closer to a living statue than a lot of mortals. XD

[marsh garden]

the warform charm is a strength one, but it's 1 charm deep and that one charm is a very good universal