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Exalted Questions Thread

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Unbanshee said:
They are rare though, within the setting, at least. Sure the moderately experienced dawn is going to be able to hit DV 7 without too much stress, and the Zenith is going to be able to sway the most stubborn of tyrants, and the Twilight is going to be able to find any bit of lore, no matter how secret, and the Night can sneak through an entire palace full of bound demons on alert, and the Eclipse is going to be able to pilot a ship between two cliffs in the middle of a driving hurricane.

These are all legendary kinds of things that give you a reputation in game. Someone with a Parry DV of 5 is supposed to be extremely difficult to strike. The fact that the returning god kings of the lost age can do so trivially does not trivialize how fuckin badass it is in the eyes of everyone who is not a god king.
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They already are rewarded. They can set or requedt higher difficulty tasks any time, taking penalties they overwhelm with skill.

Essentially? They get what they try to do, and they can try a hell of a lot. Someome with 10 dice on athletics isn't going to fail a roll to leap a simple ledge, but they could add more qualifiers to make it more impressive.
 
An idea for a Sorcerous spell. Celestial tier.

Simply put, celestial spell made by a lunar really fitting in the barbarian mindset. He makes this spell, to damage the tools of the realms armies.

It's basically a heart of darkness. A field that, once deployed, will start eroding away at any form of technology.

A wooden staff? Falls apart in a day or so, rotting away.

A sword of jadesteel, forged in the realms most advanced forges? Rusts away to dust in several minutes.

Artefacts, magical materials, and weapons held by exalted do not fail.

How about it?
 
"technology" is sort of vague, where's the cutoff point? it would probably be more pulpy to have it just affect man-made things. Cast the spell and every minute, non-imperishable man-made objects take a level of unblockable, unsoakable damage as they decay. Lasts an hour, over a fairly wide area, so anything with less than 60 health levels that isn't evacuated ends up dust and anything with more is crippled with systemic damage.

Kinda sounds necromancyish actually.
 
Apologies. 'Man made' would indeed, be a better idea.

Maybe the damage is faster? How long are medieval battles?
 
Large scale battles take a pretty long time, and most things that can be hit by this potential spell don't have a ton of health levels. Most of the equipment an army has are going to be unusable in less than ten or fifteen minutes if this spell is cast.

As for making it faster, the way i see it, if you want to do that, you will have to sharply reduce the area and duration of the spell. If you want something that you can lay on a whole battlefield or fortress or town, it's got to be low damage and slow application.
 
Leave them in ruins more like, since stone walls have 80 health levels.

As is, it would take 40 minutes to decay a neighborhood of brick houses to dust.
 
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Sanctaphrax said:
It's the capstone, and it's really weird. It stands out for roughly the same reason the gazellecarp stands out in Dreaming Pearl Courtesan style.
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Speak for yourself, what stood out for me in DPC was the op of the unerrata'ed tick speed lowering charm and the social/religious utility of a stance that vastly boosted performance rolls.

The Gazellecarp struck me as a fairly clever commentary on how ideas of what constitute beauty are very cultural - the features of the Gazellecarp are pretty comparable to actual IRL ancient poetry. The authors of such poetry often used similies comparing the beauty of a human woman to animal features, and the Gazellecarp is just a overliteral implementation of such.
 
Unbanshee said:
That seems like a reasonable area of effect to me
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Yes. The problem is that I got no way of visualising it in my mind. What is one mile, exactly?

Anyway, an exigent idea. The Celestial god of kings, rulers, and aristocracy, infuriated by the complete and utter chaos, or some other reason, created an exigent to create 'THE GREATEST RULER OF THEM ALL'.

Charm ideas?
 
Invulnerable Wounding Futility lets you counterattack a close combat attack with an unblockable, undogable attack with a damage rating of (the Infernal's soak against the incoming attack - the raw damage of the incoming attack)B. Is there any reason you can't use it on attempts to clinch you, dealing your full soak in damage dice?
 
The Blight of Autochthon - Celestial Circle spell

There are 2 versions of this spell, both invented by the same Lunar. The Lunar, unhappy with the difference in equipment quality and infrastructure levels between the Realm, the civilized countries, and the barbarian hordes that he lead against the Realm. This spell is meant to level the field.

It comes in two forms.

1st:

All things break down. Metal rusts. Wood rots. Clothes become moth eaten. Stones are ground down to powder by time. And so do all things made by human hands. Focusing the energies of rot and making the sign of Blight, which signifies the sickness of Autochthon, the sorcerer creates a field, of one mile in radius centered around him or several hundred yards away from him. Within the field, all things made via artificial processes are slowly eroded by the energies within this field. Every minute, every single man made object or structure gains unsoakable, unblockable damage as they decay. The spell has no effect on natural things, such as rock formations or a sharp branch picked up by a hunter.

The levels of damage absorbed by each object is dependent on the object's complexity and advancement. An axe, carved from a flint stone and a branch with a hole bored into it and secured by twine, would receive one level of damage. On the other hand, a suit of plated mail or a stainless steel sword forged in the artisan-crucibles of the Realm would receive 5 per minute
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2nd:
The sorcerer makes the sign of the blessing of Autochthon, made to represent his love of tools and technology and carved upon the tools of the jadeborn. And then he inverts it.

In a scream of horror sounding unsettingly like the ones released by blightborn, the functioning of technology within an area of 2 miles wide ceases to function. Firedust refuses to ignite. Knives do not cut. Gears do not turn. Everything made by man, every tool, every crutch weakening them, is rendered useless.

The only thing usable are claws and natural weapons. And those, the Lunar and his subordinates know how to use quite well.
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Something I was wondering. Herd dynamics. Taboo invoking diatribe. I know that its possible for people to do that, but how does it actually manifest, when done in real life? Do you go to people who are basically the lynchpins of the community and the social circle, and then convince them of your views? do you go to the gossip mongers and spread out ideas?
 
Accelerator said:
Something I was wondering. Herd dynamics. Taboo invoking diatribe. I know that its possible for people to do that, but how does it actually manifest, when done in real life? Do you go to people who are basically the lynchpins of the community and the social circle, and then convince them of your views? do you go to the gossip mongers and spread out ideas?
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Either-or. Solar Charms in general are best described as 'Human styles of effort, on an exaggerated scale/effectiveness'.

Now strictly speaking along the 2e readings of Taboo-Inflicting Diatribe, you quickly run int problems trying to affect Big Units (Mag 5+). So it pays to aim lower at Ruling Courts; also there's the hostile meme of using TID to gossip with a janitor and affect the change in a kingdom- that's an abusive behavior you shouldn't invoke.

TID and similar are designed to work on Units/Courts, and courts can in turn lead other courts (implicitly). Further, courts have specific traits akin to Motivation/Intimacies that govern how they behave. So TID (the Compulsion effect) basically is all about making a court Do or Not Do something.

Basically TID and alike require you to Actually Socialize with the court in question- around people who actually Belong to that court. Joe Mortal generally does not belong to the court of the kingdom he's a citizen of. It's on paper possible to do so- but it requires that the king and every member of the unit he leads be in the same room/scene, which is Difficult to organize and very improbable outside of auditoriums and the like.

But, TID abstracts the actual hob-nobbing into an unrolled 'spend a few hours doing this' action; so people KNOW you're pushing an agenda, but it's not really magical yet until you roll the charm.
 
Accelerator said:
Yes, but how does one actually do that, using normal means? I mean, this is sorta confusing.
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Basically you just say that your character is spending the time talking up the goal; don't do this, do that! Feel this, don't feel that! That's all you have to do, around the people you want to affect that are direct members of your target unit. You don't even have to convince them with actual rolls during those actions- the point is to create a footprint so that people know 'Hey, that guy in gold armor was talking shit about the Realm' and then later 'Wow we hate the realm too don't we guys!'

A bit more thought can make it more elaborate- print out pamphlets, crib from modern advertising techniques. Get disguise charms so people don't recognize you as the one being subversive.
 
Personally see it as identifying key people to flip and then flipping them so that they will push the message on, leveraging the trust of their society in them.

If you can't reach the Elder you can reach the gossipy barmaid who reaches the Elder's guards who gossip where the Elder can hear and then spread out from there
 
Something's been bothering me for a while now, and I figure the thread can help with this.

Regarding the domains of the Five Maidens, Mercury, Venus, and Mars are easy to figure out. Saturn took a little thinking, at least until I remembered its association with Time, the planet being associated with Kronos. What confuses me is Jupiter's association with Secrets. It's something that I can't figure out. Does anybody know why Jupiter is the Maiden of Secrets?
 
So, where is the info on Cherak!? I've gone through my books and I'm just not finding it. Can some point me towards them, any edition is fine.
 
There's some stuff in MOEP Dragonblooded. Starts page 62.

Googling suggests that that might be the best you'll find.
 
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