Guess I'll follow your lead.
Basically, I agree. But I'd take it a step further: even if nobody is usurping anyone, anything which makes the Primordial War or Usurpation impossible is probably broken. Usually, if you can confidently say, "this particular magic power, this one entry in a huge Charmset, seriously restricts the course of history", that's a problem. I'm prepared to make a few small exceptions for iconic abilities, but only a few.
There's no Charm, barring excellencies, that's standard. But there's a capability that is. And that's the capability to not get chumped.
That capability is not dependent on "P-War/Usurpation-OK", and using the -OKs to judge it brings in a tremendous amount of baggage.
Especially when it's being applied in the inverse fashion ("a Charm to negate this effect must exist!"). In this very thread we've had people argue about how
the Golden Children and their role in late First Age society were essential features of the setting necessary to maintain the plausibility of the Usurpation.
The form of the responses bear this out: many amounted to "well this is just covered by such-and-such a charm that grants immunity to this Keyword". That's the most boring possible way of resolving the question.
Even if something equivalent happened in the Primordial War, maybe it was solved by a Zenith using Seventeen Cycles Symphony as a lullaby on the swarm, or maybe a Twilight constructed a sphere of adamant filled with a captive ray of sunlight, whose brilliance affected the bots more or less literally like moths and flame. And so on. "There exists a solution" is a long long way from "yeah you just need this immunity charm and you're cool".
Additionally, in the context of this conversation (some kind of Exalted scifi crossover),
@MJ12 Commando had the essentially correct take, which is that Exalts' ability to resist the hypothetical nanoswarm depends crucially on which type of story you are trying to tell: are you trying to transplant the Exalted narrative role of irrepressible champions into this new setting, or are you trying to tell a story about the god-kings of the world running into an Outside Context Problem?
I'm sticking with my original claim: the Exalted are the fixed point of this game, and the prior written history of the setting is
secondary to giving players the ability to play the returned god-kings of old, or elemental heroes, or mysterious sages who manipulate the world, or moon-witches and shape-changers and monsters that frighten children. The setting's history exists to enable that, not the other way around.
No, Solars (the whole Exalted host, actually, but sure) must have the capability to not be insta-chumped by things the godlike reality-warping architects of existence (or to use 3E language, the masters of the universe, world-shaking incarnations of primordial nightmare) could have thrown at them. A swarm of attacker nanobots neatly fits into this category, because it is easy and plausible to imagine such an entity deploying such a weapon - it won't be called "devourer nanoswarm", but the same concept applies whether you call it that or you call it the all-consuming breath of Metagaos, spewing out Hunger so fierce and deep that the very air tries to devour you alive as you breathe it, a billion hungry maws in every lungful. Different fluff, same attack.
The P-War OK check serves two purposes: a) the plausibility of the game's history is preserved, allowing players to maintain their personal immersion in the setting and b) things that are detrimental to gameplay (via insta-killing PCs who otherwise have a reasonable expectation that they can defend against every threat vector) are not allowed into the game in order to prevent "accidents", something that is relevant to every playable Exalt splat.
The Usurpation-OK check does the same thing, save that the thing that is detrimental to gameplay which it is supposed to prevent is the PCs' elder bosses having the ability to flawlessly prevent the PCs from betraying them and stabbing them in the back to usurp their power, something that is relevant to every playable Exalt splat except (non Gold Faction) Solars. Dead man's shoes promotions are something the mechanics should encourage.
If you want to make a serious case for removing these two checks to increase the potential breadth of powers that can be put into the game, I must ask you, why would you want PCs to be insta-chumped by undefendable attack vectors and/or be unable to stab their elders in the back to take their power? Neither of those result in any kind of good gameplay by default, so I think having a prohibition on making them is a good thing. If a GM really wants to open the can of worms he can make his own homebrew disasters.
Even if we don't value setting consistency at all, "don't make instakill-PCs powers, that shit causes table fights" and "don't make 'invincible elder' powers, that's terrible" apply just as much to 3E as 1E or 2E.
You are demonstrating the
problem with implementing "don't make instagib powers or invincible elders" as "P-War/Usurpation-OK". You are carrying in assumptions about the actual kinds of things that happened in that war. Certainly they are plausible, but alternatives are also plausible, and the setting should allow for a very large amount of leeway as to those details. It should do so for three reasons:
- Preserve table freedom as to those details.
- Prevent minutiae of ancient history (or setting metaphysics) from leaking into assumed character knowledge. It's very important for in-setting characters, including PCs, to be convincingly uncertain or wrong about such details.
- Counter the idea that a simple, linear history of Creation is even possible any more than it is possible to tell a simple, linear history of humanity. Arms did some very good work here, conveying that much of the "history" of the prior Ages of the world is as debatable as questions like "when did the Roman Empire fall?"
The "P-War/Usurpation-OK" checks are harmful because they suggest constantly referring to those events and considering them in sufficient detail to give a yes-no answer.
There's also a deep flaw in the way you apply "can't be chumped". As a matter of fact, Exalts (even Solars)
can be chumped, individually. Not every Solar Exalt has the supernal awareness necessary to detect any sneak attack, or the swordmanship to parry a mountain, etc. The idea of standard charm lists that everyone sensible takes is awful and mercifully gone. You shouldn't actually do so to players in your game - "I don't have any awareness charms" does
not mean "I would like to see the Bad End - Killed In Your Sleep screen" - but you should not assume every character has an answer to every threat.
What this means is, as in my reply to Sanctaphrax, "Exalts can find a way to deal with X" probably does
not include a "well now you perfectly resist X" charm. Sometimes it does. But most of the time it should involve something
interesting. In the context of a crossover, where you are probably picking and choosing which themes of the source settings to transfer, that applies even more strongly.
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