- Location
- Singapore
Done.
Now, what do you think of it? Or at least, the production rules for it?
General Exalted Thread
- Thread starter Aleph
- Start date
Now, what do you think of it? Or at least, the production rules for it?
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
I cast another bottle into the ocean.
Venus-Whisper Mask
Artifact 3
Attune 5m
Made of diaphanous silk with Orichalcum filigree wrapped around sapphire and Adamant gemstones, this artifact veil is worn on the brow or across the nose. Richly enchanted with social magics, the wearer's face always appears in flattering silhouette in all levels of light, while offering tantalizing hints of her features beneath.
Under a circumspect enchantment, the wearer's voice is brought down into an arrestingly husky whisper that somehow travels unerringly to the wearer's intended conversation partners and nowhere else, so long as they are visible and within 10 yards. This negates any external hearing-based penalties for wearer's social action.
The veil also improves the wearer's ability to communicate and emote without speaking. She may make basic social influence actions with just her gaze or expression at no penalty, such as 'come here', 'go there', or convey and invoke moods such as showing a performer how much she admired their work, or hinting how attractive she finds a potential liaison. Targets of such social attacks must be able to see her, however.
Those same enchantments also protect the speaker from listening ears. The veil makes any mundane Awareness, Investigation or Socialize action to hear the Solar's words inapplicable, while supernatural attempts are made at +4 Difficulty. Characters can attempt to piece together the conversation from unoccluded participants, but doing so is attempted at +2 Difficulty.
However, these enchantments require a light voice to use properly. Speaking loudly or with intent to be heard further than ten yards away voids the benefits for the remainder of the scene, as does removing the veil. Thus the wearer must draw conversation to her, or move boldly to her destination.
Venus-Whisper Mask
Artifact 3
Attune 5m
Made of diaphanous silk with Orichalcum filigree wrapped around sapphire and Adamant gemstones, this artifact veil is worn on the brow or across the nose. Richly enchanted with social magics, the wearer's face always appears in flattering silhouette in all levels of light, while offering tantalizing hints of her features beneath.
Under a circumspect enchantment, the wearer's voice is brought down into an arrestingly husky whisper that somehow travels unerringly to the wearer's intended conversation partners and nowhere else, so long as they are visible and within 10 yards. This negates any external hearing-based penalties for wearer's social action.
The veil also improves the wearer's ability to communicate and emote without speaking. She may make basic social influence actions with just her gaze or expression at no penalty, such as 'come here', 'go there', or convey and invoke moods such as showing a performer how much she admired their work, or hinting how attractive she finds a potential liaison. Targets of such social attacks must be able to see her, however.
Those same enchantments also protect the speaker from listening ears. The veil makes any mundane Awareness, Investigation or Socialize action to hear the Solar's words inapplicable, while supernatural attempts are made at +4 Difficulty. Characters can attempt to piece together the conversation from unoccluded participants, but doing so is attempted at +2 Difficulty.
However, these enchantments require a light voice to use properly. Speaking loudly or with intent to be heard further than ten yards away voids the benefits for the remainder of the scene, as does removing the veil. Thus the wearer must draw conversation to her, or move boldly to her destination.
Like a lot of 2e Artifacts, this one has a cluster of functions and powers that are more or less thematically connected to 'this is a veil, veils hide your face. How do they hide your face'.
Now I love fluff/crunch, so technically this artifact has a 'zeroth' power, which is the magical silhouette effect. It has no immediate or concrete mechanical effect, but it's intended to convey that this is an Obviously Magical article of clothing, and in the hands of an attentive Storyteller, can be used to accentuate the scene.
The first 'power' is a fairly basic, conditional penalty negator. It basically makes it so you can always be heard so long as you're in range of your social target. The phrase 'husky whisper' may sound like fluff, but it actually is intentional in that it automatically makes everything you say sound like that.
On potential updates or revisions, an expansion or replacement could be something like a conditional modifier based on the husky voice. Like "+X bonus when playing to the husky voice, -X bonus when playing against', so it makes it a very clear use-space. Can you use it as a general issuing orders to their soldiers? Sure, but you gotta sound like a tall/dark/handsome guy or smoky jazz femme fatale.
Alternatively, the first power could be revised with the phrase 'speech-based actions within this range are always Applicable'.
The second power is a bit meatier, in that it again, negates a penalty on a specific class of actions- that is, making eyes or similar expressions at people and attaching short, simple social influences to them. It shares a bit of design space with Excellent Emissary's Tongue from 2e Solars, which is a penalty negator for characters who lack a common language. The intent here was to limit the function, to make it an enabler- you used it to get them into the short talking range.
The third power is cribbed in broad mechanical strokes from 2e Solar Larceny, which I personally hold as a standard in that it communicates a certain threshold of power. Effects like this however raise the idea of play and counter-play. What's 'fair' or healthy for the table to allow. This artifact demands magic to fight directly, or great skill to do so indirectly.
Powers like this, for good or ill, raise the bar on interaction to supernaturals. Is this far to players or storytellers, to lock out an entire class of beings (mortals without supernatural boons) from engaging? On paper as per 2e's design, it's arguably intentional. A lot of those 'chaff-reducing' charms existed to automatically sort engagements into the decisive Magical vs Magical contest, instead of drowning the players in constant mortal minutiae.
This comes back to Exalted and similar being a low-trust system. The storyteller can, willfully or by mistake, bog the game down with mechanics- so players are armed with charms that expedite these things. I don't know if the third power is too strong, and I don't know what I'd do to dial it back.
Lastly, we get to the Drawback. On the face of it, it doesn't sound like much- you can't talk loudly or try to call out to people far away. Doing so deactivates the effects for the remainder of the scene. But, this kind of drawback, behavioral more than anything, is I feel a step in the right direction. You can make the wearer speak out of turn (using social influence to make them shout, get them mad, etc). You can also rip the veil off if you're so inclined.
Of course, the benefits of the veil are only useful in social/dramatic spheres, so the 'loss' of its powers only means that you can be spied on more effectively.
Heh. I like how the 'design notes' are bigger than the artifact itself.
Now I love fluff/crunch, so technically this artifact has a 'zeroth' power, which is the magical silhouette effect. It has no immediate or concrete mechanical effect, but it's intended to convey that this is an Obviously Magical article of clothing, and in the hands of an attentive Storyteller, can be used to accentuate the scene.
The first 'power' is a fairly basic, conditional penalty negator. It basically makes it so you can always be heard so long as you're in range of your social target. The phrase 'husky whisper' may sound like fluff, but it actually is intentional in that it automatically makes everything you say sound like that.
On potential updates or revisions, an expansion or replacement could be something like a conditional modifier based on the husky voice. Like "+X bonus when playing to the husky voice, -X bonus when playing against', so it makes it a very clear use-space. Can you use it as a general issuing orders to their soldiers? Sure, but you gotta sound like a tall/dark/handsome guy or smoky jazz femme fatale.
Alternatively, the first power could be revised with the phrase 'speech-based actions within this range are always Applicable'.
The second power is a bit meatier, in that it again, negates a penalty on a specific class of actions- that is, making eyes or similar expressions at people and attaching short, simple social influences to them. It shares a bit of design space with Excellent Emissary's Tongue from 2e Solars, which is a penalty negator for characters who lack a common language. The intent here was to limit the function, to make it an enabler- you used it to get them into the short talking range.
The third power is cribbed in broad mechanical strokes from 2e Solar Larceny, which I personally hold as a standard in that it communicates a certain threshold of power. Effects like this however raise the idea of play and counter-play. What's 'fair' or healthy for the table to allow. This artifact demands magic to fight directly, or great skill to do so indirectly.
Powers like this, for good or ill, raise the bar on interaction to supernaturals. Is this far to players or storytellers, to lock out an entire class of beings (mortals without supernatural boons) from engaging? On paper as per 2e's design, it's arguably intentional. A lot of those 'chaff-reducing' charms existed to automatically sort engagements into the decisive Magical vs Magical contest, instead of drowning the players in constant mortal minutiae.
This comes back to Exalted and similar being a low-trust system. The storyteller can, willfully or by mistake, bog the game down with mechanics- so players are armed with charms that expedite these things. I don't know if the third power is too strong, and I don't know what I'd do to dial it back.
Lastly, we get to the Drawback. On the face of it, it doesn't sound like much- you can't talk loudly or try to call out to people far away. Doing so deactivates the effects for the remainder of the scene. But, this kind of drawback, behavioral more than anything, is I feel a step in the right direction. You can make the wearer speak out of turn (using social influence to make them shout, get them mad, etc). You can also rip the veil off if you're so inclined.
Of course, the benefits of the veil are only useful in social/dramatic spheres, so the 'loss' of its powers only means that you can be spied on more effectively.
Heh. I like how the 'design notes' are bigger than the artifact itself.
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
It's fairly explicit in that comic that the villagers knew what was happening and why, and second that the river rising was a side effect of the rice gods tears. I.e. not malevolent just emotional.
- Location
- United States
The text LITERALLY has the following lines: "Actually, their own river god had set this disaster upon them. had they offended him somehow? had he just grown spiteful and cruel? they knew not."
They. Knew. Not.
Throughout creation, the standard mortal reaction to everything supernatural is to placate it with whatever you can and keep your head down and hope that is enough. Some places don't need much placating because the spirits are focused on doing their jobs and others need a lot because the spirits are corrupt as fuck. Some places you are allowed to cut down trees because the forest spirits will accept a little prayer in exchange while others demand blood sacrifice. Some rivers you can just cross because the spirit is doing it's job, and some rivers you have to throw jewels into because the spirit is a greedy shit. Some gods are horny fucks who will approach attractive youths to get lucky, sure. But an animistic society means that mortals know spirits exist in everything, because they know that Sweet Springs the god of the river killed that drunk dude a couple generations ago for pissing in his river. They know that if you don't say a prayer over the game you killed, a spirit might curse you with rabies, or if you don't plant a sapling after you chop a tree down, then the next time you go into the forest a dryad might come out of a tree and pull out your heart.
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
The follow up shows the Solars confronting the god, hearing the explanation, and realizing that the villager had all that information ahead of time. The old man knew that the bandits had taken the girls, knew that the god had been neglected because of that. Instead of sending a shaman or elder to talk to the god and ask for help reclaiming their womanfolk, 'So that we may continue worshiping you', they tricked the Solars into attacking the river god.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
To be honest you'll probably want to look into a more focused site if you want to get into a game instead of signing up when someone's interested in running one. RPNation, Mythweavers or Gianttip are probably a good start.
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samdamandias
Apprentice Plane Wizard
Been a while since I've posted here, and there was some stuff I realized that I'm not going to be responding to simply because it's a few weeks old.
Anyway, I could use the thread's help for homebrewing an Artifact based on some other homebrew.
The Sidereals: Where Fate Has Lead homebrew includes the Five Station Path as a sorcerous initiation. Five Station Path gives the option of paying two dots for a set of tools that give +1 to Shape Sorcery, or four dots for an Artifact that gives +2 to Shape Sorcery.
I figured a Wrackstaff would be a good Artifact to use as a basis for this, and the +2 to Shape Sorcery is the bonus for attuning it, but beyond that I'm having a hard time coming up with any of the Evocations for it. The current name for the Artifact is the Fivefold Staff, and it is a staff of purpleheart* with five groups of five jade bands, for a total of five bands of each kind of jade.
Sort of like Gnomon, I'm trying to go for almost none of the Evocations being about hitting things with the staff, aside from maybe one or two. One of those is probably going to be a low-cost or permanent that lets the user attack with Occult instead of Melee when using the Fivefold Staff, and I don't want to make an Evocation that's basically a charm. I want to stress, I'm not asking people to design the Evocations for me, but help me figure out ideas to base the Evocations on.
*Apparently purpleheart is associated with control, especially control over magic. I had also considered making the core of the staff out of maple, or even a laminate of five kinds of wood.
Anyway, I could use the thread's help for homebrewing an Artifact based on some other homebrew.
The Sidereals: Where Fate Has Lead homebrew includes the Five Station Path as a sorcerous initiation. Five Station Path gives the option of paying two dots for a set of tools that give +1 to Shape Sorcery, or four dots for an Artifact that gives +2 to Shape Sorcery.
I figured a Wrackstaff would be a good Artifact to use as a basis for this, and the +2 to Shape Sorcery is the bonus for attuning it, but beyond that I'm having a hard time coming up with any of the Evocations for it. The current name for the Artifact is the Fivefold Staff, and it is a staff of purpleheart* with five groups of five jade bands, for a total of five bands of each kind of jade.
Sort of like Gnomon, I'm trying to go for almost none of the Evocations being about hitting things with the staff, aside from maybe one or two. One of those is probably going to be a low-cost or permanent that lets the user attack with Occult instead of Melee when using the Fivefold Staff, and I don't want to make an Evocation that's basically a charm. I want to stress, I'm not asking people to design the Evocations for me, but help me figure out ideas to base the Evocations on.
*Apparently purpleheart is associated with control, especially control over magic. I had also considered making the core of the staff out of maple, or even a laminate of five kinds of wood.
- Location
- United States
Where exactly does that happen? The way the comic plays out is that the circle encounters a flooded village, the people say that the realm has impoverished them through taxes, bandits have raided them and stolen a bunch of their population and now the river god has flooded their village and they don't know why. then the circle fights the river god and he explains that the reason was because the village didn't sing to him this year and the solars put two and two together and go off to save the villagers. NOWHERE in that are the mortals tricking the circle into attacking the river god.
Sasha
Not the Leader
- Location
- The Ever After
Three ideas immediately spring to mind:
- An Evocation that allows you to pause Shaping Sorcery mid-casting to take other actions without losing Sorcerous Motes. Instead of losing 3sm per turn, you could reflexively pay 3m to retain them. Maybe have those Dissonant with Jade only retain (lower of Essence or 3) Sorcerous Motes.
- A Permanent-type Charm that essentially acts as a second Shaping Ritual. I only have a vague idea of what the Five Station Path entails, but maybe tie the nature of the ritual into the weapon's creation/history?
- There are artifacts that let DBs use Celestial Circle Sorcery, right? Have this be one of them. If you don't want it to be too powerful, have it so that it doesn't actually let them learn CCS, but instead grants them the use of one Celestial spell with control benefits. This way the artifact could still be of use to Celestial Exalts (though I would say the Evocation should be one of the ones that can only be unlocked by characters Resonant with Jade).
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Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The people the Circle is confronting at the end are, I believe, the bandits.
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
Just reread it, at the end it was bandits, not the villagers, my bad. I'm still wondering why the hell noone tried to send someone expendable to the river god to explain things. Hell, it was even said that part of the pact was the river god defending them and that the god didn't know his tears had raised the waters.
- Location
- United States
no one went up to the river god to explain things because mortals are afraid of spirits, like i have been saying all along. What is most likely to have happened is that this river god made the deal with the village a couple generations back when it had a shaman or priest to negotiate that kind of thing, and then the tradition of the village sending people up to the canyon to sing, to keep up their side of the bargain, became just that, a tradition. Everyone knows that there's a river god out there protecting the village in exchange for a festival once a year and since the river god was looking out for the village, there wasn't a need for a shaman or priest and the position faded away because the village needed another farmer or craftsperson more than it needed a holy person who didn't have to negotiate with spirits because the river god was taking care of that.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
But how does this fit with the parts of spirit lore that are small and that even people who aren't shamans can get? Like the... what were they called? Below sorcery, but above nothing?
That doesn't really paint the same picture, does it?
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Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
That's called Thaumaturgy, and it is what shamans (among other people) use.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It was the "among other people" part that had me tripped up. Most descriptions of the whole world/etc here leaned heavily on the animism and the accessible nature of the magic, so that everyone is doing magic in little ways basically every day, just in tiny ways. Etc, etc.
That sort of vibe?
Or he wasn't listening.
You know, like people do when they're throwing a tantrum or grieving.
Same comic explicitly states that he didn't go to the village to check on them anyway.
- Location
- United States
Thaumaturgy is magical science in Creation. It's also not actually what one would call common, since (again) the vast majority of mortals are busy focusing on surviving and don't have time for learning much if any actual magic. The people who are most likely to have access to it are the shamans, or priests, or savants, and having magic gives you a degree of power. It's also what small spirits are doing when they make grass grow and things fall down and bread bake in an oven, so yes, in a way, everyone is doing magic all the time, but it's natural magic.
Look, buddy, pal. The river god thought the villagers had abandoned him and he boo hooed because he was super sad. Why would he think they had abandoned him IF THEY VISITED HIM OUTSIDE OF THE FESTIVAL DAYS?
This river god story, if it's at all like you're describing it, is sounding increasingly stupid. The river god's annual festival was ruined, and now the river is flooding, and the drooling morons in the village can't imagine that these events could be connected? There's no one willing to go talk to the spirit, so instead they'll just meekly drown-slash-starve, because that's less frightening? There are no halfway-competent priests in the village, which somehow hasn't stopped them from throwing religious festivals, nor has it already killed them all in any of the dozens of other ways inattention to spirits can wipe out a village? The villagers couldn't pray to the river god for mercy from a safe distance, which he would have noticed because gods can hear prayers?
There are three possibilities here:
1: You're misinterpreting and/or misrepresenting the story.
2: The story is actually a pretty crappy representation of mortal/spirit relations.
3: Creation is mostly inhabited by helpless imbeciles with no initiative or problem-solving ability (regarding spirits or otherwise), who can only sit and suffer and hope that a hero will come and save them.
Of those, 3 is just flat-out unacceptable. Exalted worldbuilding doesn't do that. People in Creation don't fail to take action because plot - they may well be so outgunned that it doesn't matter, but that's clearly not the case with this river god. (Not because they have any significant power over him, but because what he wants from them is pretty reasonable.)
- Location
- Singapore
Maybe the priests were all killed in the bandit attack?
- Location
- United States
They don't take action because of plot, they keep their heads down because they've already been crushed by ruinous taxes and bandit raids and now their god is flooding their village. They are literally hanging on by a thread, because all the able bodied people have been stolen as slaves! The river god doesn't have a house down the street that they can just stop by and fill him in on gossip.
Spirits are supposed to remain hidden from mortals, so the ones that show themselves are, one and all, corrupt in some fashion. Sometimes this corruption is benign, but ask yourselves honestly, how many people on earth right now, if they could get away with doing whatever they want because they have magic that the masses can't contest and they are immortal and naturally see themselves as better than the mortals around them, do good and selfless things? Especially since being actively corrupt gives you more tools that you can use to hide your corruption?
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
1: People pray when they are in trouble, that's why the primordials made humans so weak. Gods can literally hear prayer, and they have a protection pact, that involves the god protecting them, so why haven't they contacted him? Beg for mercy, to save us, please we'll do anything!
2: We know that any god that shows them self is corrupt. The god knows. Does a random Threshold village know? No way in hell, unless they had an Immaculate monk pass through and actually payed attention to them, they would not.
- Location
- United States
Prayer is literally meaningless background noise unless someone makes the prayer roll. This is an impoverished village of mortals, what makes you think there's anyone who is capable of succeeding in such a roll? Or that they tried and they botched and this is the result of that botch?
the point of me bringing the corruption up isn't that mortals will understand it, but that the kind of god who does it has already decided "fuck the rules, i'm gonna do what i want" and people that do that don't generally do it out of the kindness of their hearts with a desire to make the world a better place
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
Let me ask you a question. In Exalted, do people get good at what they do often? Are farmers good at farming, mending folks what sawbones do? If someone does a task five times a day for a minute each, are they going to be good at it? That's how much done people pray irl, and in a world gods might listen? People gonna git gud.
Second, in the Yu Shan book, it explicitly states unless you play the game, you aren't moving up in life. Also in the Yu Shan book: after the Contagion, heaven closed for years on end. The terrestrial gods? If they obeyed heavens law? The Balorian Crusade killed them. The ones that fought, tried to save their people are the ones that had the best chances. River god might not be the kinda god with Compassion Five, but he sure as hell values his worshipers.
From the illustration, that village looks to have at least fourteen big communal houses. Let's say one family lived in each, and that there are no more houses. Farming families have lots of kids. Five kids per couple means seventy people. Let's call a prayer roll Charisma or Manipulation + Performance or Socialize. Getting the god's attention would be a two success difficulty. Mortal A is the closest thing this podunk village has to a bard, he's an old guy who tells a lot of stories. Not super Charismatic, but not incompetent, so two there. Not a novice, but not great so another two in Performance. Guy's desperate, bandits took his granddaughter, so he sends Willpower. He plays on the god's 'I like the girls singing to me' intimacy, reducing the difficulty by one. Four dice plus one auto success to make a Difficulty one, formerly two roll. Oh wait, it looks like he passed it by spending Willpower! The god now knows what is going on and is furious that someone harmed his worshippers. One problem solved.
Any corruption is working for the mortals. What the god wants is pretty girls singing hymns to him.
Exalted 2e page 120 states difficulty 2 is 'difficult'.
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It also says that the Prayer is explicitly Charisma + Performance and the roll to get a god's attention is difficulty (7-resource value of the sacrifice) 12 pages later on 132.
Given a mortal with Cha 5, Per 5, Spec (prayer) +3, exceptional tools +2 is rolling 15 dice and doesn't double 10s, they are going to average 6 successes. Those stats are exceptionally rare for Dynasts who were raised with all the advantages money can provide. (No published NPC outside of Elders from Dreams of the First Age have them).
The standard mortal thaumaturge (page 281) has Cha 3 + Per 2 for 5 dice. That is a professional priest with training, not an illiterate farmer.
For reference:
E1 says Cha + Per diff 6-resources cost on page 336 of the core
E3 says Cha + Per diff 5-resources cost on page 468 of the core
As for sacrifices,
I'm sure there were stacks of those lying around in the heavily taxed, robbed, and flooded village.
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