Lexica
Persevere
- Pronouns
- She/Her
...Wasn't that unintentional?
General Exalted Thread
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
I would appreciate if I could get the assistance of this thread in resolving a rules question regarding Witness to Darkness. If a character uses quotes to get his point across than will the penalty to all attempts to be honest and straightforward still apply? Can the use of quotes as a tool for stunting a social attack be used to get around the restrictions of Witness to Darkness". My thought is that the mimicry and theme of stealing from others inherent to the use of quotes may serve as a sufficient reference to the ethos of the Ebon Dragon that it can bypass the normal limitations on honesty and intentions.
Example: Fiend Jehova wants to repair his bonds with a friend. His intentions are earnest and he only wishes the best for his friend. If Jehova were use this quote by his famous "Come, now, and let us set matters straight between us," "Though your sins are like scarlet, They will be made as white as snow; Though they are as red as crimson cloth, They will become like wool." as his Charisma social attack would he still suffer a penalty on his attempt to make up with his friend?
PS: This is using the improved version of Witness of Darkness that is as follows;
Witness To Darkness:
The Ebon Dragon sees through darkness lesser than himself. The Infernal can ignore all penalties and sensory
impairment associated with darkness in any form, treating pitch black as though illumined by clear noon. Witness to Darkness grants no additional capability to see through other forms of visual impairment such as fog and smoke. This attunement to darkness has a price, as direct sunlight in Creation imposes a 1 internal penalty to all nonreflexive actions. Said penalty can be ignored for a scene with the expenditure of one Willpower. Should the Infernal suffer a Crippling effect that blinds her, she may perfectly ignore the effect as a defense to see clearly. However, for as long as this benefit is used Primordial Essence leaks from the eye (or socket), making this Charm Obvious. The player defines how the leakage manifests. Finally, the Infernal is unimpressed with the murk of others' guile, and adds her Essence rating to her MDVs against inherently deceptive social attacks and as bonus successes to recognize or pierce another's deceptions.
Her attunement to lies makes it harder to be honest, however, imposing a - (Essence) internal penalty to all attempts to be honest and straightforward, save when truth brings more pain than lies.
Example: Fiend Jehova wants to repair his bonds with a friend. His intentions are earnest and he only wishes the best for his friend. If Jehova were use this quote by his famous "Come, now, and let us set matters straight between us," "Though your sins are like scarlet, They will be made as white as snow; Though they are as red as crimson cloth, They will become like wool." as his Charisma social attack would he still suffer a penalty on his attempt to make up with his friend?
PS: This is using the improved version of Witness of Darkness that is as follows;
Witness To Darkness:
The Ebon Dragon sees through darkness lesser than himself. The Infernal can ignore all penalties and sensory
impairment associated with darkness in any form, treating pitch black as though illumined by clear noon. Witness to Darkness grants no additional capability to see through other forms of visual impairment such as fog and smoke. This attunement to darkness has a price, as direct sunlight in Creation imposes a 1 internal penalty to all nonreflexive actions. Said penalty can be ignored for a scene with the expenditure of one Willpower. Should the Infernal suffer a Crippling effect that blinds her, she may perfectly ignore the effect as a defense to see clearly. However, for as long as this benefit is used Primordial Essence leaks from the eye (or socket), making this Charm Obvious. The player defines how the leakage manifests. Finally, the Infernal is unimpressed with the murk of others' guile, and adds her Essence rating to her MDVs against inherently deceptive social attacks and as bonus successes to recognize or pierce another's deceptions.
Her attunement to lies makes it harder to be honest, however, imposing a - (Essence) internal penalty to all attempts to be honest and straightforward, save when truth brings more pain than lies.
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azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
Are they being honest and straightforward in their use of quotes?
They are being honest in their intention for the goal of the social attack but they are being dishonest in the sense that they are not directly quoting their own words. The theme of the Ebon Dragon comes in from their use of material copied from someone else who possesses greater renown.
Yeah, that's the damning problem. Since he's trying to make up honestly and straightforwardly with no ulterior motives or the like, he's running into the clause.
Fortunately, there's a way to remedy that. Just play the guilty party, and apologise for things that aren't your fault and that you don't actually feel sorry for. "Oh, no, really, this was all my fault. I'm the wrong-doer here. I'm here humbly to ask for your forgiveness and hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for wronging you." Then invite him out for dinner at a restaurant, tell him you'll pay, and make sure he gets drunk and you're there to be the perfect friend.
That makes sense but I cannot help but be a bit disappointed as it invalidates a scene I was imagining in with Sasimana circumvents the restriction of her Witness to Darkness charm that discourage her from verbally showing her love of Keris by stealing quotes from famous romantic plays. I cannot help but think that this scene would have the potential for some absolutely adorable shenanigans based on Keris's ignorance of dynast culture and Sasimanas embarrassment from her rare display of genuine emotion.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
@Revlid covered it, but I shall unpack with an example!
Let's say I'm playing a conquering lord Solar. I use Husband-Seducing Demon Dance to raise huge armies. The idea of drawing Narrative Aggro, is that other people/nations should notice this action, and respond accordingly. They don't necessarily have to be HOSTILE to me- a weak nation may want to ally with a strong one, for example, like how Lookshy protects the Confederation of Rivers.
I'm not actually denied my army by the storyteller, I don't have to go through gameplay hoops to actually get the dudes- but I am taking an action that should have obvious consequences, even before I commit to the field of battle.
Or, maybe I'm a private investigator, running around asking pointed, awkward questions of important people. Those important people should be taking actions to prevent my investigation, and allies should be stepping forward to help.
Tying this back to Craft- if I'm making a giant sun-focusing mirror and lens artifact, I should be hiring all the glassblowers in the land or training new ones. And logically, the locals should notice the sharp uptick in glassware quality/quantity. Learned savants should be able to piece together that I am making an Artifact, and now people should consider hiring me, killing me and taking my stuff, or otherwise engaging with me.
And that is what the Ebon Dragon does to you with that revised WtD. It doesn't make you into a liar. It makes you into a cynic, into a PR person, into someone who's always considering the aesthetics of your actions and the effects they'll have on your viewers. You can be honest, but only if you're not being straightforward about it. If you carefully calculate that honesty will serve you best at this current moment, and make sure to use that honesty as a bouncing off point for accomplishing your own goals, you're fine.
Though I will point out it's only a (-Essence) internal penalty. It's not great, but if you're running around with the 13 dicepool of a social expert you can just soak it and be merely "pretty good" at spontaneous displays of affection. WtD won't stop you being honest and straightforwards if you want to - it's just when it matters, you want to be a cynical PR person rather than a brave hero speaking from the heart.
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
That is not being dishonest. I don't know why you're under the impression that using quotes to communicate is dishonest, but the use of quotes is basically irrelevant to whether or not you're being honest.
Sasimana is a socially-oriented Exalt. The penalty to honest and straightforward social actions isn't going to stop her from doing anything with her social skills, just make those actions harder. She is entirely capable of showing genuine emotions - and having them be taken as such - if she so chooses.
I've a question concerning Autochthonia. I'd like to write something about the first assembly of Xexan ALchemicals. There core purpose after gaining some experience, would be to create a stable trade route through the Quarantine Layer. Would it be possible to harvest Starmetal from the patrolling Destroyers that they would regularly need to deal with? What might be some of the consequences of this. I assume the concentration of Destroyers would increase as they try to unmake the Alchemical's work.
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I appreciate the clarification. I'm having a little bit of trouble picturing it in actual play, and that may just be that I'm not sure what all you're covering under "gameplay hoops."
Let's run with your example of raising an army with HSDD. You pop a "raise an army" Charm, and boom, you have an army - there are no ST obstacles to that happening. But! Say your new army threatens the next country over, so they send in their own army.
I guess the thing I'm trying to suss out here is, "When does 'I pop a Charm and resolve the situation' end?" - or does it? Like, is there any particular reason I shouldn't have "My army kills their army: the Charm?" Are there more hoops to resolve this situation, or is it solved as trivially as the last? If it isn't, why not?
I'm not sure whether I'm even asking the question right, here, but I'm having some trouble sussing out what this hypothetical game would actually consist of. Does that make any sense?
Thing about combating Autochthonia's spirits directly is that it involves two things, 1) driving home the point that You Are There when you should not be, and 2) that you are a volatile and aggressive force unwilling to act in accordance with the Great Maker's supernatural systems. There's a reason why most ventures into the Reaches askew dealing with spirits directly, going around their patrol routes, or finding ways to appease or redirect them, and its not because they are individually so mighty as to be a legitimate threat to a well-armed cadre. More of the fact, once you declare yourselves a parasitic element to the system, such as depopulating the local security detail, you risk the Entire supernatural population within the region turning on you to correct this obstacle to proper functioning.
This is what happened during the Elemental War between Sova and Yugash, where the fighting between the two sides caused so much collateral damage that even elementals started wading into the scene, killing indiscriminately. Because to their eyes, all humans present were at fault, and the only method of resolution was "Trespassers will be Executed." Being in such a precarious place as it is, it'd be Severely unwise for Xexas to provoke this kind of autoimmune response from the local custodians, because it'd be very easy to simply stage a coordinated battle the underslept and overworked populace cannot hope to win, with the end-goal of "unplugging" this non-essential piece of hardware conflicting with everything, and send the whole city plummeting down into the wastes below for recycling.
So I ran a Xexan game for a while at Uni, and the way the city "paid its way" was effectively by being a system for recycling things from the Pole of Smoke. So, you'd have essentially submarine-esque aircraft that'd dive down into the Pole of Smoke and recover valuable resources from the mountains of scrap and waste down there. Of course, everyone was having to go around in sealed environment suits and it was still super-dangerous, which was exactly why the PC Alchemicals were there. They were trying to essentially secure a base-camp on the top of one of the scrap mountains which rose above the smoke, dig into it, and then use it as the secure landing pad to move things back up to Xexas, rather than just effectively grabbing what they could in dives down.
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I see, thank you for the response. This is something I was worried about. So it would be better to deal with it though stealth I suppose. Perhaps crafting some sort of stealthy transports to use in caravans. Diplomacy is implied to be useless as the Destroyers are set to "kill on sight". is teleportation or spatial warping impossible in setting? some sort of gate network would be a convenient way to bypass the Quarantine zone and would allow for much needed expansion into the reach.
Edit: To Earth Scorpion
Thank you for your thoughts. This is what I see for the first major project of the Alchemicals. It's implied however, that raw materials are not Xexas's major concern, but rather there inability to expand. This leads me to think the next major project would be trying to reliably get through the Quarantine zone.
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- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Okay- So 'traditional' game structure is: "Player wants to do something. The storyteller decides that, to make sure the player appreciates what they have, they put obstacles or requirements in the way to achieving it'.
Exalted deliberately said 'No, you don't do that, you have Charms, so focus on the consequences of having what you wanted, not the day to day of getting it'. Craft is the big exception, because Craft has such a huge gameplay impact with mechanical assets.
Like, if a mortal king wants to raise an army, they need to go out recruiting- finding willing soldiers or hiring mercenaries. They spend scenes of effort which may or may not be rolled, with varying levels of difficulty, and all of this exists to arbitrate the quality and quantity of their starting forces. These are all game actions that can be roleplayed.
HSDD goes "Everyone who hears this now loves me/my cause, and will fight for me." Skipping most of that.
Exalted Charms generally not supposed to solve situations, they're supposed to create them by their use. I use HSDD to make an army. Now I have an army. What now? Don't get me wrong- there are several Charms that exist primarily to bypass whole plot types by design, but the intent of all of those, is to keep the game focused on doing stuff and not on grunt work.
This tangents back to I think what everyone deals with, love/hating the combat system and 'balance' therein. People want Exalted combat to be a game not unlike DnD, where it has meaningful tactical choices and so on. This is not an unreasonable desire, but in asking it to be a game, you give up on various setting conceits and demand awkward balances of power. It's the "How many DBs should threaten a Solar" problem. That question is firmly gamist- it's not actually anything relevant to the setting, it's "I have this enemy type, and I want to challenge my players."
Exalted is not about game challenges, it's about moral and ethical challenges. I have unimaginable power, am I good or bad?
Craft is the exception to the 'Expedite Action' model of Exalted, because it's trying to sell how hard it is for anyone not Exalted to craft artifacts and manses, and that these things take time. Time that justifies the pace of the setting before the Solars return or the Realm fragments under civil war.
It serves as a timer and pacing mechanism to prevent players from glutting their sheets with gear to solve all problems.
Let's see, back to your original question of 'where does pop charm/resolve situation' end? The answer to that varies, because on paper you actually can extend it pretty far.
I raised an army, but now the local nations all want to remind me they have armies too. A diplomatic scene ensues where I use my social charms to convince them of something that benefits me. This is fine, because even in using social magic, I invite consequences: What if others see the sudden diplomatic coup and suspect vile Anathema mindstomping?
Do I mindstomp those supsicious nations? Can I? Do I have to crush them with force of arms? Do they call the Realm on me in response? That's Narrative Aggro, those chains of decisions and consequences. The nuts/bolts "I roll to do X" is actually irrelevant at this point.
- Location
- NYC
Crafting serves two purposes, though. It allows you to more easily obtain/possess Artifacts, and it creates specific Artifacts.
It isn't clear what the narrative aggro will be for obtaining/possessing Artifacts or Manses, which makes it hard to evaluate what the narrative aggro should be for pretty much any given specific craft project. If the Dawn wants to start with a five dot Artifact, does it automatically become the focus of pretty much everyone they meet, with people coming from near and far to try to buy or steal it? Many Dawn PCs I know wouldn't especially want that, especially to the extent that it subordinates their own character and accomplishments to that of their weapon. So, is there supposed to be a difference in-setting between Tony Stark finding an ancient First Age set of power armor lost for centuries or building one of his own, if he doesn't go around bragging about how he was the one who made it?
A crafter being known for the ability to make specific Artifacts is a big deal, since that's dramatically more versatile than just having an artifact, but it requires either a lot more crafting projects or somehow iterating on a design before that information will necessarily become widely known.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Actually, if a person has a 5 dot artifact at chargen, it should draw narrative aggro- but, there is a quality here worth noting: Not all forms of aggro are supposed to be crises or things you have to solve. I wasn't clear on that, but this is like, high level ST advice, not an actual mechanical system.
But, risking using an artifact I wrote myself, that Malestrom Blade- the daiklave that makes storms and whirlpools? It's by design meant to have a reputation, people recognize it. If you start the game with it, I would want people who know about legendary swords to say they recognize it. To speak of the battles it has been seen in or muse aloud on the battles yet to come.
This is a form of narrative aggro, attention- investment in the player. It's not the same thing as saying "Everyone will try to steal it!" (though I definitely think an attempt could be made". But it still emphasizes the Artifact and the character who wields it, which is much more important.
You are quite correct about a crafter being able to make specific things- even before Artifacts. A master shipwright can design oceangoing vessels and has a deserved reputation for quality. Same with an architect or poet. None of these require Exalted magic, but still draw narrative aggro/attention.
- Location
- New York City
This is a really, really useful bit of advice, particularly for Exalted. I didn't have a vocabulary to describe it before but this is really helpful for fleshing out how to do it.
- Location
- Ottawa
This attitude is why Exalted Craft has never been good.
- Location
- NYC
Expound?
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
I should note, just to get the nitpick out of the way; this absolutely can be as a setting question, particularly if you're exploring say, how many assets the Wyld Hunt likes to draw to its banner to put down a Solar, and what that says about its powers of requisition and tactical doctrine. But the sense in which you're asking it is, yes, strictly gamist - at least, insofar as GNS theory is valid.
While you cannot deal with Destroyers in-person, as they are problem-solving guard dogs, it is extremely possible to go over them and speak with the spirit in charge of the immediate sector, since anywhere that has Destroyers defending it is typically important enough to have an overseeing subprocess. The Quarantine Layer is by no means one unified structure, no more than your lungs are a big pair of air-sacs. So staking out one particular mountain-sized filter-valve or something to repurpose for the task, and defining the undertaking to the spirit in charge of that area in such a way that it does not interrupt its activities, and may in fact actively benefit it by optimizing the local space (such as by crewing the area with mortals capable of defending it without a Destroyer detail), would be the best "diplomatic" direction to address it from.
Just like in Creation, the further you can go over someones head, the more likely you are to find someone who has the authority to do what you want, and stave off the things you don't, but they're going to have demands of their own roughly as involved as accomplishing it yourself, just with less blood on your hands.
Another method would be the Brute Force way, of simply setting up a network of custodian-repelling wards around the designated area, and carving out a section of the place from supernatural dominion manually. This will have a knock-on effect for systems nearby, as now those custodians will need to redirect their patrol routes Around the area, and may not be willing or able to manage the regular maintenance/retrofits, and leaving it to fall entirely under mortal stewardship, on top of the work needed to keep Xexas survivable. This is probably one of the few ways to establish a foothold for a "portal" or Elsewhere conveyance of some kind, because such a huge installation is going to have power needs involving tapping into the nearby geomancy circuits, which is a suitably hard "for your own good" sell to any spirit keen on upholding its domain to peak efficiency.
This may or may not result in a message or possible visit from such a creature, looking to see what is going on and why a significant portion of its allotted resources are being rerouted without its permission.
samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
I just want to make sure I understand this, but 'Narrative Aggro' can include people taking a look at player's artifacts and going "Oh shit, that's X. Say, I should go pay my cousin who lives in another city a visit. Like, right now."
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Correct- or "One who has mastered such a blade is surely the one true swordsman- take me on as your disciple!".
The point is, players are supposed to make waves, and then their gear makes waves within waves.